Title: Design study of medium-sized Pb-Bi cooled fast reactors with natural uranium as fuel cycle input using modified CANDLE burn-up scheme

Authors: Zaki Su'ud; Hiroshi Sekimoto

Addresses: Nuclear Research group, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Bandung Institute of Technology, Jl Ganesha 10, Bandung, Indonesia. ' Tokyo Inst. of Technology, O-okayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 152, Japan

Abstract: In this study application of modified CANDLE burn-up scheme for medium-sized (800-1500 MWt) long-life Pb-Bi cooled fast reactors with natural uranium as fuel cycle input has been performed. The reactor cores are subdivided into several parts with equal volume in the axial directions. The natural uranium is initially put in region 1, after one cycle of 10 years of burn-up it is shifted to region 2, and 10 years after that it is shifted to region 3. This concept is applied to all regions, i.e. shifted the core of I-th region into I+1 region after the end of 10 years burn-up cycle. The first region 1 is filled by fresh natural uranium fuel. The core radial size is optimised to give maximum power density around 400 W/cc.

Keywords: Pb-Bi coolant; fast reactors; natural uranium; burn-up cycle; long life without on-site refuelling; CANDLE burn-up scheme; bismuth; lead; nuclear reactors; nuclear energy; nuclear power.

DOI: 10.1504/IJNEST.2012.046983

International Journal of Nuclear Energy Science and Technology, 2012 Vol.7 No.1, pp.23 - 44

Received: 26 Jul 2011
Accepted: 10 Feb 2012
Published online: 05 Dec 2014 *

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