Performance of Transuranic-Loaded Fully Ceramic Micro-Encapsulated Fuel in LWRs Final Report, Including Void Reactivity Evaluation

Pope, Michael A. ; Sen, R. Sonat ; Boer, Brian ; Ougouag, Abderrafi M. ; Youinou, Gilles

Idaho National Laboratory

关键词: Spent Fuels Deep Burn;    Fuel Pins;    Reactor Technology;    Oxides;    Triso;   

DOI  :  10.2172/1042353
RP-ID  :  INL/EXT-11-23269
RP-ID  :  DE-AC07-05ID14517
RP-ID  :  1042353

美国|英语

来源: UNT Digital Library

【 摘 要 】

The current focus of the Deep Burn Project is on once-through burning of transuranics (TRU) in light-water reactors (LWRs). The fuel form is called Fully-Ceramic Micro-encapsulated (FCM) fuel, a concept that borrows the tri-isotropic (TRISO) fuel particle design from high-temperature reactor technology. In the Deep Burn LWR (DB-LWR) concept, these fuel particles are pressed into compacts using SiC matrix material and loaded into fuel pins for use in conventional LWRs. The TRU loading comes from the spent fuel of a conventional LWR after 5 years of cooling. Unit cell and assembly calculations have been performed using the DRAGON-4 code to assess the physics attributes of TRU-only FCM fuel in an LWR lattice. Depletion calculations assuming an infinite lattice condition were performed with calculations of various reactivity coefficients performed at each step. Unit cells and assemblies containing typical UO2 and mixed oxide (MOX) fuel were analyzed in the same way to provide a baseline against which to compare the TRU-only FCM fuel. Then, assembly calculations were performed evaluating the performance of heterogeneous arrangements of TRU-only FCM fuel pins along with UO2 pins.