An Investigation on the Sustainability of a Sodium-cooled Breed-and-Burn Fast Reactor (B&BR)

摘要

Self-sustainability of a B&BR fuel cycle has been investigated by recycling the B&BR UNF after a highly proliferation-resistant processing which removes only gaseous fission products. Three types of recycling strategies were considered and it was confirmed that recycled B&BR fuel can be re-used to start a new B&BR core even without removing the rare earth fission products. A zone-wise fuel recycling turns out to be necessary since it provides a more efficient utilization of the recycled fissile material in the 2nd B&BR core. Similar study for the 3 rd B&BR core is also worthwhile to find the equilibrium B&BR which is really self-sustainable.