A particle-bed gas cooled fast reactor core design for waste minimization.

Conference · Fri Oct 11 00:00:00 EDT 2002

OSTI ID:803897

Hoffman, E A; Taiwo, T A; Yang, W S; Fatone, M

The issue of waste minimization in advanced reactor systems has been investigated using the Particle-Bed Gas-Cooled Fast Reactor (PB-GCFR) design being developed and funded under the U.S. Department of Energy Nuclear Energy Research Initiative (USDOE NERI) Program. Results indicate that for the given core power density and constraint on the maximum TRU enrichment allowable, the lowest amount of radiotoxic transuranics to be processed and hence sent to the repository is obtained for long-life core designs. Calculations were additionally done to investigate long-life core designs using LWR spent fuel TRU and recycle TRU, and different feed, matrix and reflector materials. The recycled TRU and LWR spent TRU fuels give similar core behaviors, because of the fast spectrum environment which does not significantly degrade the TRU composition. Using light elements as reflector material was found to be unattractive because of power peaking problems and large reactivity swings. The application of a lead reflector gave the longest cycle length and lowest TRU processing requirement. Materials compatibility and performance issues require additional investigation.

• Research Organization: Argonne National Lab., IL (US)
• Sponsoring Organization: US Department of Energy (US)
• DOE Contract Number: W-31-109-ENG-38
• OSTI ID: 803897
• Report Number(s): ANL/RAE/CP-108869; TRN: US0300616
• Resource Relation: Conference: 7th Information Exchange Meeting on Actinide and Fission Partitioning and Transmutation, Jeju (KR), 10/14/2002--10/16/2002; Other Information: PBD: 11 Oct 2002
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS
12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE WASTES, AND NON-RADIOACTIVE WASTES FROM NUCLEAR FACILITIES
21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS
29 ENERGY PLANNING
POLICY AND ECONOMY
ACTINIDES
COMPATIBILITY
DESIGN
FAST REACTORS
FISSION
MINIMIZATION
NUCLEAR ENERGY
PERFORMANCE
POWER DENSITY
SPENT FUELS
TRANSMUTATION
WASTES