Assembly-level analysis of heterogeneous Th–Pu PWR fuel
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This study compares homogeneous and heterogeneous thorium-plutonium (Th-Pu) fuel assemblies (with high Pu content – 20 wt%), and examines whether there is an increase in Pu incineration in the latter. A seed-blanket configuration based on the Radkowsky thorium reactor concept is used for the heterogeneous assembly. This separates the thorium blanket from the uranium seed, or in this case a plutonium seed. The seed supplies neutrons to the subcritical thorium blanket which encourages the in-situ breeding and burning of
While past work on Th-Pu seed-blanket units shows superior Pu incineration compared to conventional U-Pu mixed oxide fuel, there is no literature to date that directly compares the performance of homogeneous and heterogeneous Th-Pu assembly configurations. Use of exactly the same fuel loading for both configurations allows the effects of spatial separation to be fully understood.
It was found that the homogeneous fuel with and without burnable poisons were able to achieve much higher Pu incinerations than the heterogeneous fuel configurations, while still attaining a reasonably high discharge burnup. This is because in the heterogeneous cases,
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1873-2100