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Neutronic and burn-up calculations of heterogeneous Thorium/Uranium fuel in pressurized water reactors

  • B. Foad , H. Mansour and M. Aziz
Published/Copyright: April 25, 2013
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Abstract

The purpose of this work is to study the feasibility of the Thorium/Uranium fuel cycle in heterogeneous Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR) core design. This paper focuses on the neutronic and burn-up analysis of the Thorium/Uranium fuel using the computer codes MCNPX and WIMS. The design is based on the Whole Assembly Seed and Blanket (WASB) concept, in which the individual seed (Uranium) and blanket (Thorium-Uranium) units occupy one full-size PWR assembly in a checkerboard core configuration. The results of the present models were compared with the solution of benchmark problems and satisfactory agreement was found.

Kurzfassung

Zweck dieser Arbeit ist eine Machbarkeitsstudie zum Thorium/Uran Brennstoffkreislaufs in Druckwasserreaktoren. Die Arbeit konzentriert sich auf Neutronen- und Abbrandberechnungen von Thorium/Uran Brennstoff mit Hilfe der Computer Codes MCNPX and WIMS. Der Aufbau basiert auf dem Whole Assembly Seed and Blanket (WASB) Konzept, bei dem die einzelnen Seed-(Uranium) und Blanket-(Thorium-Uran) Einheiten eine volle PWR Anordnung in einer vertikal versetzten Kernkonfiguration besetzen. Die Ergebnisse der derzeitigen Modelle wurden verglichen mit der Lösung von Benchmark-Problemen mit befriedigender Übereinstimmung.

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Published Online: 2013-04-25
Published in Print: 2010-09-01

© 2010, Carl Hanser Verlag, München

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