Education and Training Series #15: PHENIX AND SUPERPHENIX FEEDBACK EXPERIENCE
Part of a webinar series hosted by the GIF Education and Training Working Group since 2016.
Who should attend?
Policymakers, industry professionals, regulators, researchers, students, the general public.
About the "GIF Education and Training" Webinars
These webinars, organised by the GIF Education and Training Working Group are streamed live monthly. The recordings and slide decks are accessible after the webinar on this website. These webinars cover a very broad range of technical and policy related topics. At the end of 2023 they have been viewed by more than 15000 people (approximately half of the views during the live streams and the other half views being of the archives on the public GIF website). In total, the GIF webinars have reached Generation IV enthusiasts, scientists, and engineers in more than 80 countries.
These webinars are organised and hosted by the GIF Education and Training Working Group (ETWG).
About this Webinar
France energy situation is specific : no fossil energy available ( oil, coal, gas, etc..), a large fleet of PWR in operation providing about 80% of electricity , and a successful reprocessing activity providing each year about 10 tons of plutonium. In this situation, sodium fast breeder reactors would be very useful for the country, and have been developed with the Rapsodie, Phenix and Superphenix reactors. The feedback experience of these reactors has been analyzed and collected in two books “Phenix: the feedback experience” / EDP sciences 2012, and “Superphenix: Technical and Scientific achievements” / Springer 2016. This thematic analysis was performed on materials, fuel, neutronic, thermal hydraulic, components, water sodium reaction, sodium leaks, safety, and more generally on all the specific technical matters related to this type of reactor. The presentation gives, for each theme cited above, the main results obtained and the main conclusions or recommendations for the future of sodium fast breeder reactors.
Presentation made during the webinar
Meet the presenter
Joël Guidez began his career in the field of sodium-cooled fast reactors, after graduating from the Ecole Centrale de Paris in 1973. He worked at Cadarache for eight years on the design, dimensioning and testing of sodium components for Superphénix. He also followed the initial results, from the Phénix sodium-cooled fast reactor start-up in 1974. Then he joined Phénix where, for five years, he was in charge of measurements and tests on the power plant. In 1987, he returned to Cadarache to lead a thermo-hydraulics laboratory, where many tests were performed for Phénix, Superphénix and the European Fast Reactor (EFR) project. After a period of apparent unfaithfulness to fast reactors, during which he successfully managed the OSIRIS research reactor located in Saclay, and the European Commission’s reactor, HFR located in the Netherlands, he returned to Phénix in 2002, where he managed the reactor until 2008 during his final operating phase. Since 2011, he is considered as international expert in CEA and wrote two books: “Phenix feedback experience” Editor EDP Sciences and “Superphenix. Technical and scientific achievements” editor Springer.