Compact once-for-life fueled reactors for developing countries

Journal Article · Tue Sep 01 04:00:00 EDT 1998 · Transactions of the American Nuclear Society

OSTI ID:644283

Greenspan, E; Elias, E; Kastenberg, W E; Stone, N ^[1]; Aoki, K ^[2]; Brown, N W ^[3]

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1. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
2. AITEL Corp., Tokyo (Japan)
3. Lawrence Livermore National Lab., CA (United States)

An evaluation of promising concepts of reactors and fuel cycles for developing countries has recently been initiated by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The leading criteria guiding this evaluation include proliferation resistance, inherent safety, and ease of operation and maintenance. Desirable nonproliferating ingredients identified include lack of refueling (no storage of either fresh or spent fuel) in the developing country and, if possible, use of {sup 235}U (enrichment <20 wt%) rather than Pu for the initial fissile fuel. The first ingredient may best be achieved if the core can be designed with one fuel load per life. The 4S (super safe, small, and simple) reactor concept was the first selected for evaluation. The reference design is for 50 MW (electric) and 9 yr between refueling. The core radius and height are, respectively, 41.5 and 400 cm. Between the core and the radial shield there is a 15-cm-thick annular reflector made of a 150-cm active part (stainless steel or C) above which is a 350-cm-long cavity. The burnup reactivity swing is compensated for by a very slow but continuous and automatic rise of this reflector. The power level is automatically adjusted to the power demand by the negative temperature coefficient of reactivity. The designers suggest that the 4S reactor can operate very safely and without attendance. The average discharge burnup calculated for the Pu-U-Zr-fueled core is 41 GWd/t. More recently, a 4S reactor design for 24 yr of full-power operation was proposed. This core uses the central absorber (safety rod) in addition to the annular radial reflector for burnup reactivity control. The average discharge burnup of a Pu-U-Zr fueled core is 129 GWd/t (Ref. 5). The purpose of this work is to evaluate the feasibility of an absorbing follower (AF) reflector, one of several new approaches conceived for long-life core designs that are simpler and may be more economical than that of Ref. 5.

• OSTI ID: 644283
• Report Number(s): CONF-980606--
• Journal Information: Transactions of the American Nuclear Society, Journal Name: Transactions of the American Nuclear Society Vol. 78; ISSN 0003-018X; ISSN TANSAO
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS
DESIGN
DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
FUEL CYCLE
LIQUID METAL COOLED REACTORS
NEUTRON REFLECTORS
NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS
REACTOR FUELING
REACTOR OPERATION
SIZE