Talk:Sodium-cooled fast reactor

Is this supposed to be unbiased? I don't know enough to edit it, but it sounds remarkably like a sales pitch to me.

This is a suggested reactor design that isn't in operation at the moment, and the exact details of how it would be deployed are not determined yet, which is why the information about it is a bit limited. There will probably be more room for discussing the pros and cons of the SFR once actual designs are determined. Also, please sign your posts on the discussion pages by sticking four ~ at the end of them. This will automatically mark them with the date and time, as well as your account name (if you have one) making it easier to see who said what. Even if you don't have an account you should still stick four ~ at the end so we can see when a comment was posted. 88.90.197.94 17:13, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Specific project or general type - Article needs to be split

First of all, "Sodium-cooled fast reactor" is a generic term and having it "hijacked" byt a particular research project is wrong as it is. This article should be retained for a 'general' description of this reactor type which would then link to articles on individual implementations - like the Russian production ones and the various European or US prototypes. Until the US-based project is split into its own article, this article will keep being a mess by its nature of being a marketing hijack.83.240.117.207 (talk) 12:33, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

All of this article seems to be about the US SFR project apart from the last line of the intro and the Reactors section. We need to split this article; eg. into Sodium-cooled fast reactor (project) and Sodium-cooled fast reactor (for the general category) ? - Rod57 (talk) 22:40, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

I've added a {{split}} to the intro. - Rod57 (talk) 14:02, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

or maybe the general type should just be a section in Liquid metal cooled reactor (and this article can be restricted to the specific US project) ? - Rod57 (talk) 14:18, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Expand tag

Why the Expand tag? It looks like a good short article to me, despite the anonymous comments above. No details are given at Wikipedia:Requests for expansion#February either. Andrewa 16:33, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I've rephrased the intro to conform to the WP:MOS and be a little less like a sales brochure, and removed the tag. Andrewa 16:43, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

First sentences of Design Goals?

The Design Goals section starts with these: "The operating temperature should not exceed the melting temperature of the fuel. It has been found that the melting point of a fuel called SFR-MOX (20% tranuranic oxides and 80% uranium oxide)." Clearly something is missing after the closing parenthesis, presumably the melting point of said fuel, as it stands now it doesn't make much sense. RealSunner (talk) 11:27, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

Melting temperature of the Fuel?

RealSunner is correct, it appears the actual value of the melting temperature of SFR-MOX was just left out. 68.13.125.78 (talk) 04:36, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

• It's 2690C according to http://www.inl.gov/technicalpublications/Documents/3901052.pdf, but I've no idea how to cite this properly. Epithumia (talk) 21:03, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Radioactivity of the sodium and the possibility to go "BOOM"

Certainly another unmentioned problematic aspect of sodium is that neutrons make it radioactive. Therefore the potential exists for sodium to come into contact with water and explode, and air and catch fire, releasing a radioactive plume. This is why two sodium loops are needed in the design. The second loop isolates the core sodium loop from the water/steam loop. Would the sodium in the secondary loop be made radioactive by contact with the first? How radioactive? How do you contain an explosion caused by contact between sodium and water say during an Earthquake or deliberately by terrorists that gain access to the plant? This seems to me to be the Achilles heal of this design and yet it not really discussed. 96.252.61.70 (talk) 17:18, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

If there were a break allowing sodium from the primary loop to enter the secondary, then yes, but by mixing rather than by contact. But Sodium-24 has a half-life of only 15 hours, so there'd be little lasting effect. You can see from the diagram that the only place water and sodium have to be close to each other is in the steam generator; there's not much water there and several places to stop the flow of sodium and water into it.

—WWoods (talk) 22:00, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

I appreciated your response, but it left several points unaddressed. The down side of a short half life is that it is very intensely radioactive, so if a large leak does occur it would be very dangerous, even if only briefly. I can believe that control systems could be designed to minimize contact between sodium and water if a leak occurred, but in a natural or man-made disaster, you would have water and radioactive sodium potentially mixing. The sodium cooled Monju plant in Japan had a leak that contacted air and very little water but was still hot enough to melt steel. Don't we have to be thinking of suddenly having the water and sodium loop mixed together if a large abrupt leak occurred? How would this be contained? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.252.61.70 (talk) 03:52, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Design Goals

The Design Goals section may be going in the wrong direction. The section should be about "A sodium-cooled fast reactor design is chosen in order to acheive X, Y, and Z"; not "here are the features we want to design into our sodium-cooled fast reactor." Anyone agree? Abramov (talk) 23:24, 24 March 2014 (UTC)

Reactors

The Russian Beloyarsk-4 BN-800 reactor has meanwhile reached criticality: http://www.nucnet.org/all-the-news/2014/06/25/russia-s-beloyarsk-4-ready-to-begin-nuclear-reaction Stepmose (talk) 13:11, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Suggestions/requests

After splitting the US project from the general type :

Could the Reactors section have the list converted to a table, with columns including construction start, first criticality ?, fuel type, pool/loop design, notes ? - Rod57 (talk) 21:57, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Could we have a section giving the trade-offs between the pool and loop designs, eg on construction cost, operational cost, safety ... ? - Rod57 (talk) 21:57, 27 September 2016 (UTC)