Integrating Advanced Recycling Centers into the Nuclear Fuel Cycle

摘要

GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) is currently designing an Advanced Recycling Center that will ultimately consume TRansUranic (TRU) elements while producing electricity to help meet the rising global demand for power. The Advanced Recyling Center (ARC) consists of two main components: an Advanced Recycling Reactor, also known as PRISM, and a Nuclear Fuel Recycling Center (NFRC). GEH's Advanced Recycling Center (ARC) is the combination of six PRISM reactors arranged in three power blocks that produce 1,866 MWe and an NFRC appropriately sized to support the reactors power blocks fuel needs. This paper focuses on the fuel management of the ARC and how it can close the LWR fuel cycle, as well as, descriptions of the current electrometallurgical technologies proposed to separate the used light water reactor fuel, and details the fuel management aspects of an Advanced Recycling Center: the amount of LWR fuel recycled during the lifetime of an ARC site, power generated from recycled used light water reactor fuel, the waste forms created, and domestic waste disposal options for these waste forms.