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Evaluation of tight-pitch PWR cores

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/5856887· OSTI ID:5856887
The impact of tight pinch cores on the consumption of natural uranium ore has been evaluated for two systems of coupled PWR's namely one particular type of thorium system - /sup 235/U/UO/sub 2/ : Pu/ThO/sub 2/ : /sup 233/U/ThO/sub 2/ - and the conventional recycle-mode uranium system - /sup 235/U/UO/sub 2/ : Pu/UO/sub 2/. The basic parameter varied was the fuel-to-moderator volume ratio (F/M) of the (uniform) lattice for the last core in each sequence. Although methods and data verification in the range of present interest, 0.5 (current lattices) < F/M < 4.0 are limited by the scarcity of experiments with F/M > 1.0, the EPRI-LEOPARD and LASER programs used for the thorium and uranium calculations, respectively, were successfully benchmarked against several of the more pertinent experiments.
Research Organization:
Massachusetts Inst. of Tech., Cambridge (USA)
OSTI ID:
5856887
Report Number(s):
COO-4570-10; MITNE-227; MIT-EL-79-022
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English