Optimal thorium-fueled CANDU nuclear reactor fuel management

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

OSTI ID:6352787

Bonin, H W

The optimization problem of in-core fuel management of a thorium-fueled CANDU nuclear reactor was investigated in terms of minimizing the total refueling rate at equilibrium refueling, while respecting criticality and power peaking constraints. The reactor model, with continuous refueling assumed, consisted of a one-dimensional representation of a reflected core divided into several number of burnup zones, for which the average discharge fluences were considered as the decision variables. The coefficients of the two energy group diffusion equations were computed with the AECL cell depletion code LATREP. Because of the presence of protactinium-233 in the fuel, the diffusion equations are non-linear, and a suitable computer code called CALYPSO had to be written to solve them by using a finite difference method. The optimization problem itself was solved by the computer code ASTERIX, written as to use a steepest descent technique such that the number of diffusion calculations needed to converge are minimized. Simulations were performed on a CANDU 600 MW reactor model for cases where the constraint on the power peaking was active and inactive, and for reactor models divided into one, two, and four burnup zones. Results indicated feed rate savings up to 14% for power peaking constrained problems.

• Research Organization: Purdue Univ., Lafayette, IN (USA)
• OSTI ID: 6352787
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS
210400* -- Power Reactors
Nonbreeding
Otherwise Moderated or Unmoderated
A CODES
BURNUP
C CODES
CANDU TYPE REACTORS
COMPUTER CODES
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS
EQUATIONS
FUEL MANAGEMENT
GROUP THEORY
HEAVY WATER MODERATED REACTORS
L CODES
MATHEMATICS
NEUTRON DIFFUSION EQUATION
NEUTRON FLUENCE
OPTIMIZATION
POWER DENSITY
PRESSURE TUBE REACTORS
REACTORS
SIMULATION
THERMAL REACTORS
THORIUM REACTORS