A search for minimum volume of Breed and Burn cores
- Dept. of Nuclear Engineering, Univ. of California, Berkeley Etcheverry Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720 (United States)
The objective of the present study is to quantify the minimum volume a Breed and Burn (B and B) core can be designed to have and the corresponding burnup required for sustaining the breed-and-burn mode of operation based on neutronics; radiation damage constraints are ignored. The minimum radius for an idealized spherical B and B reactor is 136 cm or 110 cm for, respectively, 40% or 28% coolant volume fraction. The peak required burnup is about 25%. The minimum volume of a more realistic cylindrical B and B core is estimated to be only {approx}15% larger than that of the idealized spherical core but is only 43% of the volume of the medium-size B and B core previously designed to fit within the S-Prism reactor vessel. Thus it appears that SMR s can, in principle, be designed to have a B and B core. It was also found that the minimum volume B and B core does not necessarily coincide with the maximum permissible leakage from a core that can sustain the B and B mode of operation. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- American Nuclear Society, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 22106032
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: ICAPP '12: 2012 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants, Chicago, IL (United States), 24-28 Jun 2012; Other Information: Country of input: France; 8 refs.; Related Information: In: Proceedings of the 2012 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants - ICAPP '12| 2799 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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