Cell configuration effect on feasibility of water cooled thorium breeder reactor

Conference · Sat Jul 01 00:00:00 EDT 2006

OSTI ID:22039668

Permana, S; Takaki, N; Sekimoto, H ^[1]

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1. Research Laboratory for Nuclear Reactors, Tokyo Inst. of Technology, 2-12-1-N1-17, O-okayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 152-8550 (Japan)

As a fuel candidate, thorium cycle shows some advantages such as good breeding capability, higher performance of burn-up and from proliferation point of view, thorium is more proliferation resistant. The shipping-port reactor and molten salt breeder reactor showed that breeding is possible with thorium in a thermal spectrum. Breeding is made possible by the high value of neutron regeneration ratio {eta} for {sup 233}U in thermal energy region. In the present study, feasibility of water cooled thorium breeder reactor is investigated. A calculation method by coupling the equilibrium fuel cycle burn-up calculation and cell calculation of PIJ module of SRAC2002 code have been performed. The reactor is fueled by {sup 233}U-Th Oxide and it has used the light water coolant and zircaloy-4 as moderator and cladding, respectively. The key properties such as flux, enrichment, criticality and breeding performances are evaluated for different moderator to fuel ratios (MFR) and burn-ups. The different pin cell types have been investigated in order to analyze the effect of different fuel pin diameter. The results show the feasibility of breeding for different fuel pin cell types. The required {sup 233}U enrichment is about 2% - 9% as initial fissile loading. The lower MFR and the higher enrichment of {sup 233}U are preferable to improve the average burn-up; however the design feasible window is shrunk. The thicker pin cell shows wider feasible areas and requires lower enrichment than thinner pin cell. It means that thicker fuel pin diameter obtains better performances for breeding and reducing the fissile material utilization. (authors)

• Research Organization: American Nuclear Society, 555 North Kensington Avenue, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (United States)
• OSTI ID: 22039668
• Resource Relation: Conference: PHYSOR-2006: American Nuclear Society's Topical Meeting on Reactor Physics - Advances in Nuclear Analysis and Simulation, Vancouver, BC (Canada), 10-14 Sep 2006; Other Information: Country of input: France; 7 refs.
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS
BREEDER REACTORS
BURNUP
CALCULATION METHODS
CLADDING
CONFIGURATION
CRITICALITY
DESIGN
FUEL PINS
MODERATOR-FUEL RATIO
MOLTEN SALT REACTORS
NEUTRON SPECTRA
PROLIFERATION
REACTOR CELLS
THERMAL NEUTRONS
THORIUM
THORIUM CYCLE
THORIUM OXIDES
URANIUM 233
WATER COOLED REACTORS
ZIRCALOY 4