Stationary Liquid Fuel Fast Reactor
- Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, IN (United States)
- Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
For effective burning of hazardous transuranic (TRU) elements of used nuclear fuel, a transformational advanced reactor concept named SLFFR (Stationary Liquid Fuel Fast Reactor) was proposed based on stationary molten metallic fuel. The fuel enters the reactor vessel in a solid form, and then it is heated to molten temperature in a small melting heater. The fuel is contained within a closed, thick container with penetrating coolant channels, and thus it is not mixed with coolant nor flow through the primary heat transfer circuit. The makeup fuel is semi- continuously added to the system, and thus a very small excess reactivity is required. Gaseous fission products are also removed continuously, and a fraction of the fuel is periodically drawn off from the fuel container to a processing facility where non-gaseous mixed fission products and other impurities are removed and then the cleaned fuel is recycled into the fuel container. A reference core design and a preliminary plant system design of a 1000 MWt TRU- burning SLFFR concept were developed using TRU-Ce-Co fuel, Ta-10W fuel container, and sodium coolant. Conservative design approaches were adopted to stay within the current material performance database. Detailed neutronics and thermal-fluidic analyses were performed to develop a reference core design. Region-dependent 33-group cross sections were generated based on the ENDF/B-VII.0 data using the MC2-3 code. Core and fuel cycle analyses were performed in theta-r-z geometries using the DIF3D and REBUS-3 codes. Reactivity coefficients and kinetics parameters were calculated using the VARI3D perturbation theory code. Thermo-fluidic analyses were performed using the ANSYS FLUENT computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code. Figure 0.1 shows a schematic radial layout of the reference 1000 MWt SLFFR core, and Table 0.1 summarizes the main design parameters of SLFFR-1000 loop plant. The fuel container is a 2.5 cm thick cylinder with an inner radius of 87.5 cm. The fuel container is penetrated by twelve hexagonal control assembly (CA) guide tubes, each of which has 3.0 mm thickness and 69.4 mm flat-to-flat outer distance. The distance between two neighboring CA guide tube is selected to be 26 cm to provide an adequate space for CA driving systems. The fuel container has 18181 penetrating coolant tubes of 6.0 mm inner diameter and 2.0 mm thickness. The coolant tubes are arranged in a triangular lattice with a lattice pitch of 1.21 cm. The fuel, structure, and coolant volume fractions inside the fuel container are 0.386, 0.383, and 0.231, respectively. Separate steel reflectors and B4C shields are used outside of the fuel container. Six gas expansion modules (GEMs) of 5.0 cm thickness are introduced in the radial reflector region. Between the radial reflector and the fuel container is a 2.5 cm sodium gap. The TRU inventory at the beginning of equilibrium cycle (BOEC) is 5081 kg, whereas the TRU inventory at the beginning of life (BOL) was 3541 kg. This is because the equilibrium cycle fuel contains a significantly smaller fissile fraction than the LWR TRU feed. The fuel inventory at BOEC is composed of 34.0 a/o TRU, 41.4 a/o Ce, 23.6 a/o Co, and 1.03 a/o solid fission products. Since uranium-free fuel is used, a theoretical maximum TRU consumption rate of 1.011 kg/day is achieved. The semi-continuous fuel cycle based on the 300-batch, 1- day cycle approximation yields a burnup reactivity loss of 26 pcm/day, and requires a daily reprocessing of 32.5 kg of SLFFR fuel. This yields a daily TRU charge rate of 17.45 kg, including a makeup TRU feed of 1.011 kg recovered from the LWR used fuel. The charged TRU-Ce-Co fuel is composed of 34.4 a/o TRU, 40.6 a/o Ce, and 25.0 a/o Co.
- Research Organization:
- Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, IN (United States); Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE). Nuclear Energy University Programs
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC07-05ID14517
- OSTI ID:
- 1227267
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/NEUP-12-3326; 12-3326; TRN: US1500908
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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ALPHA-BEARING WASTES
SPENT FUELS
LIQUID FUELS
FAST REACTORS
FISSION PRODUCTS
SODIUM
REACTIVITY COEFFICIENTS
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REACTOR CORES
COOLANTS
STEELS
INVENTORIES
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
FLUID MECHANICS
FUEL CYCLE
APPROXIMATIONS
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