TECHNOLOGY CHARACTERISTICS OF TRANSITIONS TO SOLID-FUELED AND MOLTEN-SALT FAST REACTOR FLEETS

摘要

Under the Evaluation and Screening study , thecontinuous recycle of uranium and transuranics in fastreactors was identified as one of most promising futurenuclear fuel cycles in the United States. After thecompletion of the study, many example scenarios oftransition to this fuel cycle using various technologyassumptions were evaluated. The focus of this paper is onthe technology characteristics and their impacts that arisefrom the choice of deploying a fleet of solid-fueledsodium-cooled fast reactors (SFRs) or a fleet of liquidfueledmolten-salt-cooled fast reactors (MSFRs) for thisfuture fuel cycle. This study found three key technologycharacteristics that are likely to have the most significantimpact on the time-dependent supply and demand offissile material: 1) the amount of fissile material requiredto deploy a given capacity, 2) the additional materialneeded to transition from the deployment of that newcapacity to its steady-state average system inventory, and3) the maximum practical fissile material net breedingrate that is achievable. Each factor is a combination ofphysics and practical design choices. With little practicalexperience to reference, a range is considered for eachtechnical characteristic and performance was evaluatedover a range of possible future scenarios to providegeneral conclusions on the differences in transitionperformance between deploying SFRs or MSFRs.