Performance of Thorium-Based Fuel for TRU Transmutation in Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactors

摘要

Denaturing the Th fuel in a SFR burner in a once-through or closed fuel cycle is an effective way to eliminate substantially larger quantities of Pu and other TRUs than pure U fuels without introducing new concerns about the proliferation potential associated with 233~U. A closed fuel cycle with denatured Th greatly degrades the Pu quality over the once-through cycle at the cost of a lower total rate of destruction. The Th fuels outperform the U fuels on all metrics. Future work will study two-tier LWR-SFR systems for effective TRU management with harder neutron spectra available in boiling water reactors as well as with different SFR core configurations.