COST COMPARISONS FOR ENRICHED VERSUS NATURAL URANIUM FUEL AND FOR ZIRCONIUM VERSUS STAINLESS STEEL FUEL SHEATHING IN BIDIRECTIONAL SLUG FUELLED REACTORS

摘要

Despite the merit of bidirectional fuelling that permits a very high and uniform burn-up of enriched uranium, it is shown that the lowest cost fuelling is in some circumstances obtainable from natural uranium.nEnriched uranium has a relative advantage when fuel fabrication costs are high and when the neutron wastage by the reactor is high, but in such circumstances fuelling costs are necessarily not low.