Sustained Recycle in Light Water and Sodium-Cooled Reactors

Conference · Mon Nov 01 00:00:00 EDT 2010

OSTI ID:991905

Piet, Steven J; Bays, Samuel E; Pope, Michael A; Youinou, Gilles J

From a physics standpoint, it is feasible to sustain recycle of used fuel in either thermal or fast reactors. This paper examines multi-recycle potential performance by considering three recycling approaches and calculating several fuel cycle parameters, including heat, gamma, and neutron emission of fresh fuel; radiotoxicity of waste; and uranium utilization. The first recycle approach is homogeneous mixed oxide (MOX) fuel assemblies in a light water reactor (LWR). The transuranic portion of the MOX was varied among Pu, NpPu, NpPuAm, or all-TRU. (All-TRU means all isotopes through Cf-252.) The Pu case was allowed to go to 10% Pu in fresh fuel, but when the minor actinides were included, the transuranic enrichment was kept below 8% to satisfy the expected void reactivity constraint. The uranium portion of the MOX was enriched uranium. That enrichment was increased (to as much as 6.5%) to keep the fuel critical for a typical LWR irradiation. The second approach uses heterogeneous inert matrix fuel (IMF) assemblies in an LWR - a mix of IMF and traditional UOX pins. The uranium-free IMF fuel pins were Pu, NpPu, NpPuAm, or all-TRU. The UOX pins were limited to 4.95% U-235 enrichment. The number of IMF pins was set so that the amount of TRU in discharged fuel from recycle N (from both IMF and UOX pins) was made into the new IMF pins for recycle N+1. Up to 60 of the 264 pins in a fuel assembly were IMF. The assembly-average TRU content was 1-6%. The third approach uses fast reactor oxide fuel in a sodium-cooled fast reactor with transuranic conversion ratio of 0.50 and 1.00. The transuranic conversion ratio is the production of transuranics divided by destruction of transuranics. The FR at CR=0.50 is similar to the CR for the MOX case. The fast reactor cases had a transuranic content of 33-38%, higher than IMF or MOX.

• Research Organization: Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: DOE - NE
• DOE Contract Number: DE-AC07-05ID14517
• OSTI ID: 991905
• Report Number(s): INL/CON-10-20159; TRN: US1007587
• Resource Relation: Conference: 11th Information Exchange Meeting on Actinide and Fission Product Partitioning and Transmutation,San Francisco,11/01/2010,11/05/2010
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS
ACTINIDES
CONVERSION RATIO
ENRICHED URANIUM
FAST REACTORS
FISSION PRODUCTS
FUEL ASSEMBLIES
FUEL CYCLE
FUEL PINS
IRRADIATION
NEUTRON EMISSION
OXIDES
PERFORMANCE
PHYSICS
PRODUCTION
RECYCLING
TRANSMUTATION
URANIUM
WATER
advanced fuel cycles
LWRs
recycling
reprocessing
SFRs