Safety Design Criteria for Generation IV Lead-Cooled Fast Reactor System - 2021

Because of the unique safety characteristics of the Lead-cooled Fast Reactor (LFR), the Generation IV International Forum LFR provisional Steering Committee [GIF LFR pSSC] decided to develop a set of Safety Design Criteria [SDC] that are tailored to the LFR. It was agreed by the pSSC members to start the work on the basis of the previously-developed Sodium Fast Reactor SDC since these two liquid-metal cooled fast GIF Systems share some design solutions, and it was considered to be useful to use the same structure of the already-prepared SFR-SDC report, for the development of the LFR-SDC. The objective of the SDC is to present a set of reference criteria for the safety design of structures, systems and components of LFR systems with the aim of achieving the safety goals of the Generation IV reactor system. A set of eighty-two (82) reference criteria for LFR are systematically and comprehensively explained in the SDC herein.

The contents of the SDC are grouped into the following parts:
 

I. Chapter 1, Introduction, describes the background, objectives and formulation principles; and Chapter 2, Safety Approach to the LFR as a Generation IV reactor system, contains GIF’s safety goals and basic safety approach, a fundamental orientation on safety, and the safety approach to a Generation IV LFR system.
II. In Chapters 3 to 6, the criteria for the overall safety design and specific structure, system and component design are described in sequence. The structure of this part is the same as that of the IAEA SSR-2/1 (Rev.1) where safety requirements for the current generation light-water reactor power plants are listed. This style is used for the convenience of the users. The potential users of the SDC are not only GIF LFR concept developers, but also parties interested in the LFR technology in general, including international and national regulatory organizations. The differences between the IAEA SSR-2/1 (Rev.1) requirements and the GIF LFR SDC criteria are highlighted in the text in italic characters.
III. A Glossary, covering specific terminologies for the LFR system and for Generation IV reactor systems in general. A number of important terms, defined in documents such as the IAEA safety standards/glossary, are also incorporated for the convenience of the reader.