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The urgency for addressing repository impacts has grown in the past few years as a result of Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) accumulation from commercial nuclear power plants. One path that has been explored by many is to eliminate the transuranic (TRU) inventory from the SNF, thus reducing the need for additional long term repository storage sites. One strategy for achieving this is to burn the separated TRU elements in the currently operating U.S. Light Water Reactor (LWR) fleet. Many studies have explored the viability of this strategy by loading a percentage of LWR cores with TRU in the form of either Mixed Oxide (MOX) fuels or Inert Matrix Fuels (IMF). A task was undertaken at INL to establish specific technical capabilities to perform neutronics analyses in order to further assess several key issues related to the viability of thermal recycling. The initial computational study reported here is focused on direct thermal recycling of IMF fuels in a heterogeneous Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) bundle design containing Plutonium, Neptunium, Americium, and Curium (IMF-PuNpAmCm) in a multi-pass strategy using legacy 5 year cooled LWR SNF. In addition to this initial high-priority analysis, three other alternate analyses with different TRU vectors in IMF pins were performed. These analyses provide comparison of direct thermal recycling of PuNpAmCmCf, PuNpAm, PuNp, and Pu. The results of this infinite lattice assembly-wise study using SCALE 5.1 indicate that it may be feasible to recycle TRU in this manner using an otherwise typical PWR assembly without violating peaking factor limits.
The urgency for addressing repository impacts has grown in the past few years as a result of Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) accumulation from commercial nuclear power plants. One obvious path that has been explored by many is to eliminate the transuranic (TRU) inventory from the SNF thus reducing the need for additional long term repository storage sites. One strategy for achieving this is to burn the separated TRU elements in the currently operating U.S. Light Water Reactor (LWR) fleet. Many studies have explored the viability of this strategy by loading a percentage of LWR cores with TRU in the form of either Mixed Oxide (MOX) fuels or Inert Matrix Fuels (IMF). A task was undertaken at INL to establish specific technical capabilities to perform neutronics analyses in order to further assess several key issues related to the viability of thermal recycling. The initial computational study reported here is focused on direct thermal recycling of IMF fuels in a heterogeneous Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) bundle design containing Plutonium, Neptunium, Americium, and Curium (IMF-PuNpAmCm) in a multi-pass strategy using legacy 5 year cooled LWR SNF. In addition to this initial high-priority analysis, three other alternate analyses with different TRU vectors in IMF pins were performed. These analyses provide comparison of direct thermal recycling of PuNpAmCm, PuNpAm, PuNp, and Pu.
The once-through fuel cycle strategy in the United States for the past six decades has resulted in an accumulation of Light Water Reactor (LWR) Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF). This SNF contains considerable amounts of transuranic (TRU) elements that limit the volumetric capacity of the current planned repository strategy. A possible way of maximizing the volumetric utilization of the repository is to separate the TRU from the LWR SNF through a process such as UREX+1a, and convert it into fuel for a fast-spectrum Advanced Burner Reactor (ABR). The key advantage in this scenario is the assumption that recycling of TRU in the ABR (through pyroprocessing or some other approach), along with a low capture-to-fission probability in the fast reactor's high-energy neutron spectrum, can effectively decrease the decay heat and toxicity of the waste being sent to the repository. The decay heat and toxicity reduction can thus minimize the need for multiple repositories. This report summarizes the work performed by the fuel cycle analysis group at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to establish the specific technical capability for performing fast reactor fuel cycle analysis and its application to a high-priority ABR concept. The high-priority ABR conceptual design selected is a metallic-fueled, 1000 MWth SuperPRISM (S-PRISM)-based ABR with a conversion ratio of 0.5. Results from the analysis showed excellent agreement with reference values. The independent model was subsequently used to study the effects of excluding curium from the transuranic (TRU) external feed coming from the LWR SNF and recycling the curium produced by the fast reactor itself through pyroprocessing. Current studies to be published this year focus on analyzing the effects of different separation strategies as well as heterogeneous TRU target systems.
The sodium fast reactor is under consideration for consuming the transuranic waste in the spent nuclear fuel generated by light water reactors. This work is concerned with specialized target assemblies for an oxide-fueled sodium fast reactor that are designed exclusively for burning the americium and higher mass actinide component of light water reactor spent nuclear fuel (SNF). The associated gamma and neutron radioactivity, as well as thermal heat, associated with decay of these actinides may significantly complicate fuel handling and fabrication of recycled fast reactor fuel. The objective of using targets is to isolate in a smaller number of assemblies these concentrations of higher actinides, thus reducing the volume of fuel having more rigorous handling requirements or a more complicated fabrication process. This is in contrast to homogeneous recycle where all recycled actinides are distributed among all fuel assemblies. Several heterogeneous core geometries were evaluated to determine the fewest target assemblies required to burn these actinides without violating a set of established fuel performance criteria. The DIF3D/REBUS code from Argonne National Laboratory was used to perform the core physics and accompanying fuel cycle calculations in support of this work. Using the REBUS code, each core design was evaluated at the equilibrium cycle condition.
A 1000 MWth commercial-scale Sodium Fast Reactor (SFR) design was selected as the baseline in this scenario study. Traditional approaches to Light Water Reactor (LWR) Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) transuranic waste (TRU) burning in a fast spectrum system have typically focused on the continual homogeneous recycling (reprocessing) of the discharge fast reactor fuel. The effective reduction of transuranic inventories has been quantified through the use of the transuranics conversion ratio (TRU CR). The implicit assumption in the use of this single parameter is a homogeneous fast reactor option where equal weight is given to the destruction of transuranics, either by fission or eventual fission via transmutation. This work explores the potential application of alternative fast reactor fuel cycles in which the minor actinide (MA) component of the TRU is considered 'waste', while the plutonium component is considered as fuel. Specifically, a set of potential designs that incorporate radial heterogeneous target assemblies is proposed and results relevant to transmutation and system analysis are presented. In this work we consider exclusively minor actinide-bearing radial targets in a continual reprocessing scenario (as opposed to deep-burn options). The potential use of targets in a deep burn mode is not necessarily ruled out as an option. However, due to work scope constraints and material limit considerations, it was preferred to leave the target assemblies reach either the assumed limit of 200 DPA at discharge or maximum allowable gas pressure caused by helium production from transmutation. The number and specific design of the target assemblies was chosen to satisfy the necessary core symmetry and physical dimensions (available space for a certain amount of mass in an assembly based on an iterated mass density).
A series of fuel cycle simulations were performed using CEA's reactor physics code ERANOS 2.0 to analyze the transmutation performance of the Subcritical Advanced Burner Reactor (SABR). SABR is a fusion-fission hybrid reactor that combines the leading sodium cooled fast reactor technology with the leading tokamak plasma technology based on ITER physics. Two general fuel cycles were considered for the SABR system. The first fuel cycle is one in which all of the transuranics from light water reactors are burned in SABR. The second fuel cycle is a minor actinide burning fuel cycle in which all of the minor actinides and some of the plutonium produced in light water reactors are burned in SABR, with the excess plutonium being set aside for starting up fast reactors in the future. The minor actinide burning fuel cycle is being considered in European Scenario Studies. The fuel cycles were evaluated on the basis of TRU/MA transmutation rate, power profile, accumulated radiation damage, and decay heat to the repository. Each of the fuel cycles are compared against each other, and the minor actinide burning fuel cycles are compared against the EFIT transmutation system, and a low conversion ratio fast reactor.
The Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is in the process of modernizing the various reactor physics modeling and simulation tools used to support operation and safety assurance of the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR). Key accomplishments so far have encompassed both computational as well as experimental work. A new suite of stochastic and deterministic transport theory based reactor physics codes and their supporting nuclear data libraries (HELIOS, KENO6/SCALE, NEWT/SCALE, ATTILA, and an extended implementation of MCNP5) has been installed at the INL. Corresponding models of the ATR and ATRC are now operational with all five codes, demonstrating the basic feasibility of the new code packages for their intended purpose. Of particular importance, a set of as-run core depletion HELIOS calculations for all ATR cycles since August 2009 was successfully completed during 2011. This demonstration supported a decision late in the year to proceed with the phased incorporation of the HELIOS methodology into the ATR fuel cycle management process beginning in 2012. On the experimental side of the project, new hardware was fabricated, measurement protocols were finalized, and the first four of six planned physics code validation experiments based on neutron activation spectrometry were conducted at the ATRC facility. Data analysis for the first three experiments, focused on characterization of the neutron spectrum in one of the ATR flux traps, has been completed. The six experiments will ultimately form the basis for a flexible, easily-repeatable ATR physics code validation protocol that is consistent with applicable ASTM standards.