Denatured breeder with extended burnup fuel cycle

Thesis/Dissertation · Sat Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1983

OSTI ID:6135939

Bencheikh, A

To date, essentially all combinations of fuel cycle mixes have been considered, except the denatured breeder with extended burnup fuel cycle. The USTT-USTY Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor is an advanced concept using metallic fuel, enriched at the beginning to about 6 wt%, and designed to operate in such a way that once the reactor is built, it only needs natural or depleted uranium as fuel feed for the rest of the lifetime of the reactor. To establish the feasibility of the concept, a close coupling of the disciplines of reactor physics, mechanical, and thermal-hydraulic was used. This multidiscipline approach requires an iterative procedure, consisting of 4 stages. The first stage consists of general mechanical and reactor physics calculations to arrive at an initial core design. The second stage consists of detailed reactor physics calculations for the core configuration developed in stage 1. The third stage consists of detailed mechanical design calculations and thermal-hydraulics. Finally, once all the iterations have converged, the performance indices are calculated. The fuel pin design and performance indicate that the fuel element can survive the irradiation level that is equal to the requirement of the denatured reactor with extended burnup fuel cycle. The limiting cladding midwall temperature was 1060F. The criterion of no fuel centerline melting in the fuel assemblies during steady-state operation was satisfied. The maximum fuel centerline was 1478F and occurs at the end of life.

• Research Organization: General Nuclear Corp., New York (USA)
• OSTI ID: 6135939
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS
210500* -- Power Reactors
Breeding
ACTINIDE ISOTOPES
ACTINIDE NUCLEI
ACTINIDES
ALPHA DECAY RADIOISOTOPES
BREEDER REACTORS
BURNUP
DENATURED FUEL
DESIGN
ELEMENTS
ENERGY SOURCES
ENERGY TRANSFER
ENRICHED URANIUM
EPITHERMAL REACTORS
EVEN-EVEN NUCLEI
EVEN-ODD NUCLEI
FAST REACTORS
FBR TYPE REACTORS
FLUID FLOW
FUEL CYCLE
FUEL ELEMENTS
FUELS
HEAT TRANSFER
HEAVY NUCLEI
ISOTOPE ENRICHED MATERIALS
ISOTOPES
KINETICS
LIQUID METAL COOLED REACTORS
LMFBR TYPE REACTORS
MATERIALS
METALS
MODERATELY ENRICHED URANIUM
NUCLEAR FUELS
NUCLEI
PERFORMANCE
RADIOISOTOPES
REACTOR COMPONENTS
REACTOR CORES
REACTOR KINETICS
REACTOR MATERIALS
REACTORS
STEADY-STATE CONDITIONS
TRANSIENTS
URANIUM
URANIUM 233
URANIUM 238
URANIUM ISOTOPES
YEARS LIVING RADIOISOTOPES