logo

Preliminary study of the tight lattice pressured heavy water reactor loaded with Pu/U and Th/U mixed fuels

Preliminary study of the tight lattice pressured heavy water reactor loaded with Pu/U and Th/U mixed fuels

XU Xiao-Qin
XU Qiu
YOSHIIE Toshimasa
SHIROYA Seiji
Nuclear Science and TechniquesVol.12, No.4pp.302-308Published in print 01 Nov 2001
26200

To improve nuclear fuel utilization efficiency and prolong fuel cycle burn-up, a tight pitch lattice pressured heavy water reactor was investigated as an alternative of next generation of power reactors. It is shown that the high conversion ratio and negative coolant void reactivity coefficient are challenges in the reactor core physics designs. Various techniques were proposed to solve these problems. In this work, a tight pitch lattice and mixed fuel assemblies pressured heavy water reactor concept was investigated. By utilizing numerical simulation technique, it is demonstrated that reactor core mixed with Pu/U and Th/U assemblies can achieve high conversion ratio (0.98), long burn-up (60 GWD/t) and negative void reactivity coefficients.

High conversion ratioTight latticePressured heavy water reactorPu/U assemblyTh/U assemblymixed core
References
1 Edlund M C. Ann Nucl Energy, 1975, 2: 801
2 Nobuya Nakajima, Tokai Ochiai.

The study report on the undermoderated spectrum reactor

, JAERI-Conf. 1998
Baidu ScholarGoogle Scholar
3 Keisuke Okumura, Kunio Kaneko, Keichiro Tsuchihashi. SRAC 95, general purpose neutronics code system. JAERI-Data/Code. 1996
4 Halsall M S. A Summary of WIMSD4 Input Options. AEE-M1327, 1980