Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor: A Historical Overview and Future Outlook

Table 1

Design data for four early GCFR proposals. The small General Atomics GCFR was envisaged as a prototype, the GBRs were envisaged as large-scale commercial systems. From the three GBR concepts, the GBR-4 was adopted as the reference design. Note: pressure drop is over entire primary circuit for GA design; core only for GBR designs.

Reactor	GA GCFR	GBR-2	GBR-3	GBR-4
Coolant	He	He	CO2	He
Thermal power [MW]	835	3000	3000	3450
Fuel type	pins	particle	particle	pins
Fuel material	UPuO2	UPuO2	UPuO2	UPuO2
𝑇core,in [^∘C]	323	260	260	260
𝑇core,out [^∘C]	550	700	650	560
Pressure [MPa]	8.5	12.0	6.0	12.0
Pressure drop [MPa]	0.37	0.34	—	0.24
Core height [m]	1.0	1.0	1.0	1.4
Core diameter [m]	2.0	—	—	—
Breeding Gain	0.4	0.43	0.36	0.42
Year of design data	1974	1972	1972	1974