Study of the Running-in Period of a CANDU-PHW Thorium Converter

摘要

One of the concepts being studied as part of an evaluation of advanced fuel cycles for the Canadian nuclear power program is that of a Candu reactor whose initial fuel is a mixture of thorium and plutonium and whose bred uranium is recycled back to the same core with plutonium topping. From start-up of this reactor, when the fuel contains no uranium, to the attainment of equilibrium, when the uranium content of the feed fuel becomes constant, the core is in a transitional state because the composition of the feed fuel is changing. Since this so-called running-in period constitutes a large portion of the reactor life, it is essential that it be accounted for in fuel management calculations. The presence of the relatively long-lived intermediate nuclide, exp 233 Pa, in the thorium conversion chain complicates such calculations, because it causes the concentration of the important fissile isotope, exp 233 U, to depend rather strongly on flux history. A computational method based on the lattice code, WIMS, and the one-dimensional diffusion-depletion code, FEVER-7, has been developed and used to analyse the running-in period of a 1200 MWe (Th,Pu,U)O sub 2 -fuelled CANDU-PHW. (Atomindex citation 09:360764)