This paper describes the application of thermal analysis in research and development of sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR). In a SFR, the sodium-concrete reaction (SCR) should be considered when a hypothetical accidental condition such as the steel liner failure by leakage of liquid sodium (Na) was assumed. The major consequences of SCR are hydrogen release, energy release and concrete ablation. Thus, it is important to understand the phenomenology and kinetic behavior of SCR. As model reactions of SCR, reactions of sodium and sodium compounds with silica were studied using thermal analysis. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) equipped with a videoscope for in-situ observations of the reacting samples was successfully used for revealing the phenomenological features of the model reactions. Further, the kinetic features of the reactions were analyzed from DSC curves using the conventional kinetic calculation method, known as Kissinger method. Subsequently, the significance of the calculated kinetic parameters obtained for each model reaction was evaluated through the kinetic deconvolution analysis for the overlapping multi-step processes. The practical meanings of the kinetic parameters determined using the conventional kinetic analysis were discussed for utilizing these for the relative estimation of the reactivity and for the simulation of the overall behavior under real conditions.