Education and Training Series #30: Interactions Between Sodium and Fission Products in Case of a Severe Accident in a Sodium-cooled Fast Reactor

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). 

An overview of severe accident scenarios in Sodium-cooled Fast Reactors will be presented, focusing on the thermochemistry aspects and how the CALPHAD method could be used to enhance the prediction of the different phases that could form depending on the conditions of the system. CALPHAD, which stands for CALculation of PHAse Diagram, is a semi-empirical method that enables to develop a thermodynamic model based on the Gibbs free energy of the gas, liquid and solid phases as a function of temperature, pressure and composition of the system. Experimental measurements of the thermodynamic properties of some fission product compounds formed in the Joint Oxide Gain after interaction with sodium will be presented. These data will be used as input for the thermodynamic modeling.