Transmutation of minor actinides in the pressurized water reactors

Liu, Bin; Wang, Kai; Tu, Jing; Liu, Fang; Huang, Liming; Hu, Wenyi

doi:10.1016/j.anucene.2013.09.042

Cited by 48 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…In this regard, the MA transmutation in LWRs has drawn much attention so far to serve as a near-term solution to the issues with spent fuel and various methods of loading MAs into the LWRs have been investigated to realize such possibility. Nonetheless, most of the studies are reported with the Western PWRs [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. Similar studies with the Russian water-water energy reactors (VVERs) have rarely been found in the literature although a large number of NPPs based on the VVER technologies are being operated in various East European and Asian countries [17,18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Study on Transmutation of Minor Actinides as Burnable Poison in VVER-1000 Fuel Assembly

Tran

Nguyen

et al. 2019

Science and Technology of Nuclear Installations

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Thermal reactors have been considered as interim solution for transmutation of minor actinides recycled from spent nuclear fuel. Various studies have been performed in recent decades to realize this possibility. This paper presents the neutronic feasibility study on transmutation of minor actinides as burnable poison in the VVER-1000 LEU (low enriched uranium) fuel assembly. The VVER-1000 LEU fuel assembly was modeled using the SRAC code system, and the SRAC calculation model was verified against the MCNP6 calculations and the available published benchmark data. Two models of minor actinide loading in the LEU fuel assembly have been investigated: homogeneous mixing in the UGD (Uranium-Gadolinium) pins and coating a thin layer to the UGD pins. The consequent negative reactivity insertion by minor actinides was compensated by reducing the gadolinium content and boron concentration. The reactivity of the LEU assembly versus burnup and the transmutation of minor actinide nuclides were examined in comparison with the reference case. The results demonstrate that transmutation of minor actinides as burnable poison in the VVER-1000 reactor is feasible as minor actinides could partially replace the functions of gadolinium and boric acid for excess reactivity control.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Study on Transmutation of Minor Actinides as Burnable Poison in VVER-1000 Fuel Assembly

Tran

Nguyen

et al. 2019

Science and Technology of Nuclear Installations

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“…It can be seen that according MA concentrations increases, the k e f f becomes smaller, i.e. MA can act like BP [7]. The results presented in the Table 1 are related to the third column of the table 2.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 87%

Calculation of minor actinides transmutation in ADS reactors

Taipe¹

2014

Proceedings of 10th Latin American Symposium on Nuclear Physics and Applications — PoS(X LASNPA)

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“…This reminders us that the technetium-99 behaves as control poisons in some sense in the thermal reactors (Liu et al, 2013(Liu et al, , 2014Hu et al, 2015). Therefore, after loading technetium-99 transmutation material to PWR, some control poisons should be removed from the PWR core to keep the reactor in criticality, that is technetium-99 can partially substitute for control poisons in the PWR, either burnable control rods or boric acid in the coolant.…”

Section: Technetium-99 Partial Substitution For Control Poisonsmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…As technetium-99 behaves as control poisons in some sense in the thermal reactors (Liu et al, 2013(Liu et al, , 2014Hu et al, 2015), after loading technetium-99 transmutation material to PWR, we may reduce the boric acid concentration in the coolant to compensate some the reactivity decrease induced by addition of technetium-99. This denotes that technetium-99 can partially substitute for boric acid in the PWR coolant and increases the negative temperature coefficient of the PWR; this can reduce the possibility of the critical accident in a fuel cycle of PWR.…”

Section: Technetium-99 Partial Substitution For Boric Acidmentioning

confidence: 96%