High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactors - Operating on Fuel Recycle

摘要

The HTGR, because of a unique combination of design characteristics, is a resource-efficient and cost-effective reactor. In the HTGR, the low power-density core, coated particle fuel design, and gas cooling combine to provide high neutron economy, fuel burnup and thermodynamic efficiency. Under recycle uranium assumptions, the resource utilization is particularly attractive due to the high neutronic value of the bred, and recycled, U-233 produced from the thorium irradiation. The uranium resource requirements for the current MEU/Th cycle with annual refueling results in a 30-year net U sub 3 O sub 8 requirement of 3030 ST/GWe. The basic design of the HTGR refueling scheme, whereby only selected regions of the core need be accessible during each refueling, makes fuel utilization improvements through semi-annual refueling an acceptable alternative in terms of plant availability. This alternative reduces the 30-year U sub 3 O sub 8 requirement by about 10%. Additional resource utilization improvements of 11 to 14% could be realized by improved fuel management techniques. (Atomindex citation 11:541790)