PWR and VVER Thorium Cycle Calculation
16th Symposium of AER on VVER Reactor Physics and Reactor Safety (2006, Bratislava, Slovakia)
Actinide Transmutation and Spent Fuel Disposal
Abstract
The first step of the investigation of the thorium fuel cycle with HELIOS 1.8 is validation of the results obtained from the code for this particular type of fuel. To complete this first task we performed calculation of the benchmark announced by IAEA in 1995. The benchmark was based on a simplified PWR model of the assembly with reduced fuel composition. This calculation was focused on a comparison of the methods and basic nuclear data.
After successful validation of the code we focused our work on calculating the PWR and VVER thorium fuel cycles. The thorium cycle begins after the first use of UO2 fuel in the reactor as separation of plutonium from the burnt fuel. Separated plutonium is mixed with thorium and used as a new nuclear fuel in the reactor. For our calculation we prepared two variants of the assembly – the first variant is a homogeneous distribution and the second one is a non-homogenised distribution of thorium fuel in the assembly. The model of non-homogenised distribution of Pu-Th fuel was designed by replacing selected rods of the classical UO2 assembly by Pu-Th rods. These selected rods are distributed symmetrically in the assembly. Other rods in the assembly remain the same as in the classical UO2 assembly.
The calculated and compared values are criticality and fuel composition as a function of burnup.