Westinghouse advanced fuel management strategies leveraging high enrichment and high burnup fuel to optimize PWR economics

Conference · Fri Jul 01 04:00:00 EDT 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.13182/PHYSOR22-37895· OSTI ID:23203836

Lam, Ho; Konig, Arielle; Wagener, Chris ^[1]; Franceschini, Fausto ^[2]

---

1. Westinghouse Electric Company, Cranberry Township, PA (United States)
2. Westinghouse Electric Company - Mangiarotti, Monfalcone (Italy)

In the US, nuclear power plants have been focused on increasing electricity generation for over three decades via longer operating cycles, reduced number of outages and duration, and the implementation of power up-rates. The potential for zero-carbon emission credits and other carbon-reduction initiatives further makes nuclear power utilities to focus on increasing generation capability. Longer operating cycles provide increased energy generation and enable economic savings to nuclear utilities when the increase in fuel loading required to achieve the extended cycle energy target and resulting increase in total fuel cost is offset by the savings from outage avoidance and reduced replacement power costs. For the current licensed limits of 5 w/o {sup 235}U enrichment and 62 GWd/tU peak pin burnup, higher power density PWR plants, which are prevalent in the PWR fleet, require an excessively penalizing fraction of feed fuel assemblies to operate for the extended cycle duration, with inevitably poor fuel use and fuel cycle economics that cannot be counterbalanced by the savings on outage cost avoidance. To overcome this barrier, the nuclear industry is pursuing development of high enrichment/high burnup fuel technology ({sup 235}U enrichment up to 8 w/o and peak pin burnup up to 75 GWd/tU) which increases fuel energy generation capability and can enable high power density plants to achieve positive economics on 24-month cycle of operation. This paper presents advanced fuel management strategies developed by Westinghouse to enable transition of PWR reactors from 18-month to 24-month cycle of operation, with and without a core thermal power uprate, which are then used as basis to assess the economics of a direct transition from 18 to 24-month cycles with high enrichment/high burnup fuel. The results show that these fuel management strategies, especially if coupled with thermal power up-rates, present the opportunity for substantial economic benefits to utilities. The systematic review of fuel management strategies presented can provide an illustrative reference for decision makers as they consider how to maximize nuclear energy generation economically. (authors)

• Research Organization: American Nuclear Society - ANS, La Grange Park, IL 60526 (United States)
• OSTI ID: 23203836
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS
21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS
BURNUP EXTENSION
ENRICHMENT
FUEL CYCLE
FUEL MANAGEMENT
PWR TYPE REACTORS
REACTOR FUELING