Preliminary design study of the ultra long life fast reactor

https://doi.org/10.1016/0029-5493(93)90079-OGet rights and content

Abstract

A preliminary design study of the ultra long life fast reactor has been performed. In the present study, a parametric survey was carried out for three regioned spherical reactors with metallic fuels. Changes of multiplication factor, conversion ratio, and peak power density during burnup were analyzed. The calculation results showed that 40 years reactor life time without refueling can be achieved by choosing appropriate values for the initial plutonium enrichment, fuel volume fraction, and size of each corresponding region. For this design the maximum excess reactivity can be reduced to a few percent by shifting the position of the power peak from the outer to the inner region of the core along burnup. Especially, dividing core and blanket into two regions, respectively, and adjusting parameters of each region reduced the excess reactivity during burnup to below 0.2%Δk.

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