Long life small CANDLE-HTGRs with thorium

Saad, Ismail; Ohoka, Yasunori; Liem, Peng Hong; Sekimoto, Hiroshi

doi:10.1016/j.anucene.2006.10.006

Cited by 18 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…The plant showed success with the use of a thorium fuel in a light water reactor (LWR) [3]. In addition, the use of mixed thorium / uranium oxide has been employed in several reactor types such as in prismatic and pebble bed HTGRs, BWRs, LWRs, and LMFBRs [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10], but mainly focused on the use of thorium-based fuel in pebble bed HTGRs and prismatic HTGRs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Particle-type Burnable Poisons for Thorium-based Fuel in HTGR

Trinuruk

Obara

2015

Energy Procedia

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Thorium-based fuels have been proposed for use as alternative nuclear fuels in a 100-MW t prismatic high temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) to overcome the limitation of natural uranium resources. Safety design features have been addressed by using particle-type burnable poison to prevent a prompt supercritical accident in the reactor. The present study compared the proposed system with the use of 235 U-238 U conventional nuclear fuel in an HTGR. The use of thorium-based fuel showed usefulness in terms of neutron economics, but from the safety standpoint, the thorium fuel reversed the inherent safety characteristics of a negative temperature coefficient. Introducing the appropriate composition of particle-type burnable poison can be useful for reactivity control in long-term operation, but it cannot guarantee the reactor will be free from the prompt supercritical accidents. The use of particle-type burnable poisons did sufficiently minimize the reactivity and flatten the reactivity swing to decrease the burden on the control rods mechanism, and reduce the positive temperature coefficient or even make it negative. These results did improve the safety features of the reactor.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Particle-type Burnable Poisons for Thorium-based Fuel in HTGR

Trinuruk

Obara

2015

Energy Procedia

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“…This burnup value was higher compared with the burnup value obtained in the previous studies, for example, for the Germany THTR-300 pebble bed reactor with 300 MWe using uranium and 232 Th fuel which has burnup value approximately 110 GWD/T [2]. In addition to that, compared with other related studies about the use of thorium in the HTGR, such as a block type Fort St. Vrain reactor with 330 MWe power which has 100 GWD/T burnup value [3] and a 30 MWt block type HTGR with a transitional fuel composition using ( 235 U, 232 Th)O 2 with burnup value as 120 GDW/T [4], this simplified pebble bed reactor with the optimized thorium fuel configuration has higher burnup value. However, compared with the reference design case [1], burnup values of this Design A with thorium were 4.5% higher than those of Reference Design 2 using only uranium.…”

Section: Parametric Surveys To Determine the Optimal Fuel Configurationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many studies have been performed to examine the use of thorium as a nuclear fuel, but additional time and effort are needed to make its use on the industrial scale possible. In some studies about the use of thorium in the HTGR [2][3][4], they have used combination of 233 U and 232 Th to improve the burnup performance of the reactor. However, because 233 U could not be found naturally, therefore in the meantime, using natural thorium with existing technology, for example, as a fertile material mixed with the existing uranium dioxide fuel ( 232 Th, 238 U -235 U)O 2 , which is going to be performed in this study, is one way to extend the nuclear horizon by reducing the level of natural uranium utilization meanwhile trying to keep or even increase the burnup characteristics of the reactor.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Burnup characteristics and fuel cycle economics of mixed uranium–thorium fuel in a simplified small pebble bed reactor

Irwanto

Obara

2012

Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology

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The limitation of natural uranium resources and the improvement of economic values of nuclear reactors are important issues to be solved in the future development of these reactors. In our previous study, we presented an innovative design for simplifying a pebble bed reactor, and the optimization of this design showed that burnup values could be increased and natural uranium uses could be reduced. The purposes of the current study were to design a simplified pebble bed reactor by removing the unloading device from the reactor system and to further optimize the burnup characteristics of this reactor with a peu ap eu fuel-loading scheme by introducing thorium in the fuel configuration as a fertile material. Another goal was to optimize the fuel composition so that the system could achieve even better burnup characteristics and use scarce uranium resources more efficiently. Using a specially developed computer code, we analyzed and optimized the performance of a 110-MWt simplified pebble bed reactor using a peu a`peu fuel-loading scheme. An optimized design using 30% of fertile thorium mixed with uranium fuel with 15% 235 U enrichment and a 7% packing fraction calculated to achieve a high burnup of 140 GWD/T for more than 21 years' operation time that could save 13 to 33% of natural uranium use compared with the savings noted in our previous study. Neutronic, burnup and fuel economic analysis for this optimized design are discussed in this study.

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“…The advantages inherent in such reactor type are high fuel utilization efficiency and no need for dedicated procedures to enrich the fuel for the feed region, as well as increased reactor safety. Tasks were solved based on the above concept using various approaches to and descriptions of the phenomenon in question, including nuclear combustion wave (Pavlovich et al 2008), candle (Ismail et al 2007), criticality wave (Van Dam 2000), traveling wave (Gilleland et al 2016), etc. For example, (Van Dam 2000 deals with studying the stability of the nuclear combustion wave mode at the stage when the reactor already reaches the steady-state condition with constant values of the neutron flux in the system and the wave propagation velocity, as well as with studying the reactor behavior in conditions of particular external disturbances in neutron fields and of the fuel heterogeneity in the form of the fuel local initial enrichment in fissionable isotopes on the neutron fission wave propagation path.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of the neutronic performance of a fast traveling wave reactor in the Th-U fuel cycle

Pomysukhina¹,

Sukharev²,

Власичев³

2020

NUCET

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The possibility for all of the uranium or thorium fuel to be used nearly in full is expected in traveling wave reactors. A traveling wave reactor core with a fast neutron spectrum in a thorium-uranium cycle has been numerically simulated. The reactor core is shaped as a rectangular prism with a seed region arranged at one of its ends for the neutron fission wave formation. High-enriched uranium metal is used as the seed region fuel. Calculated power density dependences and concentrations of the nuclides involved with the transformation chain along the core at a number of time points have been obtained. The results were graphically processed for the clear demonstration of the neutron fission wave occurrence and transmission in the reactor. The obtained power density dependence represents a soliton (solitary wave) featuring a distinct time repeatability. Neutron spectra and fission densities are shown at the initial time point, when no wave has yet formed, and at the time of its formation. The wave rate has been calculated based on which the reactor life was estimated. The fuel burn-up has been estimated the ultra-high value of which makes the proposed reactor concept hard to implement. The burn-up of most of both the raw material and the fissile material it produces indicates a high potential efficiency of the developed reactor concept in terms of fuel utilization and nuclear nonproliferation.

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Long life small CANDLE-HTGRs with thorium

Cited by 18 publications

References 3 publications

Particle-type Burnable Poisons for Thorium-based Fuel in HTGR

Particle-type Burnable Poisons for Thorium-based Fuel in HTGR

Burnup characteristics and fuel cycle economics of mixed uranium–thorium fuel in a simplified small pebble bed reactor

Evaluation of the neutronic performance of a fast traveling wave reactor in the Th-U fuel cycle

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