page_title: Generation IV reactor
section_title: Sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR)
hierarchical_section_title: Generation IV reactor / Reactor types / Fast reactors / Sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR)
caption_attribution_description: English: Integral Fast Reactor concept. Fuel makes electricity and when spent, goes next door to be recycled as new fuel pins.
context_page_description: Generation IV reactors are a set of nuclear reactor designs currently being researched for commercial applications by the Generation IV International Forum.
  They are motivated by a variety of goals including improved safety, sustainability, efficiency, and cost.
  The most developed Gen IV reactor design, the sodium fast reactor, has received the greatest share of funding over the years with a number of demonstration facilities operated.
  The principal Gen IV aspect of the design relates to the development of a sustainable closed fuel cycle for the reactor.
  The molten-salt reactor, a less developed technology, is considered as potentially having the greatest inherent safety of the six models.
  The very-high-temperature reactor designs operate at much higher temperatures. This allows for high temperature electrolysis for the efficient production of hydrogen and the synthesis of carbon-neutral fuels.
  According to a timeline compiled by the World Nuclear Association, Gen IV reactors might enter commercial operation between 2020 and 2030. However, as at August 2020, no Gen IV projects have advanced significantly beyond the design stage, and several have been abandoned.
context_section_description: The two largest commercial sodium cooled fast reactors are both in Russia, the BN-600 and the BN-800(800 MW). The largest ever operated was the Superphenix reactor at over 1200 MW of electrical output, successfully operating for a number of years in France before being decommissioned in 1996. In India, the Fast Breeder Test Reactor reached criticality in October 1985. In September 2002, fuel burn up efficiency in the FBTR for the first time reached the 100,000 megawatt-days per metric ton uranium (MWd/MTU) mark. This is considered an important milestone in Indian breeder reactor technology. Using the experience gained from the operation of the FBTR, the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor, a 500 MWe Sodium cooled fast reactor is being built at a cost of INR 5,677 crores (~US$900 million) and is expected to be critical by 2020. The PFBR will be followed by six more Commercial Fast Breeder Reactors (CFBRs) of 600 MWe each.
  The Gen IV SFR is a project that builds on two existing projects for sodium cooled FBRs, the oxide fueled fast breeder reactor and the metal fueled integral fast reactor.
  The goals are to increase the efficiency of uranium usage by breeding plutonium and eliminating the need for transuranic isotopes ever to leave the site.  The reactor design uses an unmoderated core running on fast neutrons, designed to allow any transuranic isotope to be consumed (and in some cases used as fuel).  In addition to the benefits of removing the long half-life transuranics from the waste cycle, the SFR fuel expands when the reactor overheats, and the chain reaction automatically slows down. In this manner, it is passively safe.
  One SFR reactor concept is cooled by liquid sodium and fueled by a metallic alloy of uranium and plutonium or spent nuclear fuel, the "nuclear waste" of light water reactors. The SFR fuel is contained in steel cladding with liquid sodium filling in the space between the clad elements which make up the fuel assembly. One of the design challenges of an SFR is the risks of handling sodium, which reacts explosively if it comes into contact with water. However, the use of liquid metal instead of water as coolant allows the system to work at atmospheric pressure, reducing the risk of leakage.
  The European Sustainable Nuclear Industrial Initiative has funded three Generation IV reactor systems, one of which was a sodium-cooled fast reactor, called ASTRID, Advanced Sodium Technical Reactor for Industrial Demonstration. Astrid was cancelled in 2019
  
  Numerous progenitors of the Gen IV SFR exist around the world, with the 400 MWe Fast Flux Test Facility operated successfully for ten years at the Hanford site in Washington State.
  The 20 MWe EBR II operated successfully for over thirty years at the Idaho National Laboratory, until it was shut down in 1994.
  GE Hitachi's PRISM reactor is a modernized and commercial implementation of the technology developed for the Integral Fast Reactor(IFR), developed by Argonne National Laboratory between 1984 and 1994. With the primary purpose of PRISM differing in the focus on burning up spent nuclear fuel from other reactors, rather than breeding new fuel. Presented as an alternative to burying the spent fuel/waste, the design reduces the half lives of the fissionable elements present in spent nuclear fuel while generating electricity largely as a by-product.
caption: IFR concept (Black and White with clearer text)
exif: {}