2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. All rights reserved. The principal objective of the sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) power plant is to generate electricity. This is accomplished by transferring energy from nuclear fission to a steam system to run a turbine-generator. In this chapter we describe the SFR systems outside the core that are needed to meet this objective. The main emphasis, discussed in Section 12.2, is on the heat transport system, focusing on the design problems unique to SFRs. First, the overall heat transport system is described, including the primary and secondary sodium systems and the various steam cycles in use and proposed. Discussions then follow in Section 12.3 for the main components in the sodium system-the reactor vessel and reactor tank, sodium pumps, intermediate heat exchangers, and steam generators.
