Assessment of the Insertion of Reprocessed Fuels and Combined Thorium Fuel Cycles in a PWR System
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Assessment of the Insertion of Reprocessed Fuels and Combined Thorium Fuel Cycles in a PWR System Fabiana. B. A. Monteiro1,2, Rochkhudson. B. de Faria1, Ângela Fortini1, Clarysson A. M. Da Silva1, Cláubia Pereira1,2 1 Departamento de Engenharia Nuclear – Escola de Engenharia Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais Avenida Antônio Carlos, 6627, Pampulha 31270-901 – Belo Horizonte, Tel/Fax: 55-31-34096662, MG, Brasil 2 Instituto Nacional de Ciências e Tecnologia de Reatores Nucleares Inovadores/CNPq, Brazil [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected] ABSTRACT The insertion of reprocessed fuel spiked with thorium in a typical PWR fuel element considering (TRU-Th) cycle was simulated using different fissile materials that varied from 5.5% to 7.0%. The reprocessed fuels were obtained using the ORIGEN 2.1 code from a burned PWR standard fuel (33,000 MWd/tHM burned), with 3.1% of initial enrichment, which was remained in the cooling pool for five years and then reprocessed using UREX+ technique. The kinf, hardening spectrum and the fuel evolution during the burnup were evaluated. This study was performed using the SCALE 6.0 Keywords: advanced fuel, thorium, PWR INTRODUCTION Brazil has one of the biggest world nuclear resources, one of the first world thorium natural resource (estimated as 1.2 millions of tones of ThO2), and has a fuel cycle industry (INB – Indústrias Nucleares do Brasil) capable to provide fuel elements for the National NPP, including the enrichment [1,2]. The Brazilian Nuclear Energy Development began in the sixties, recognizing the strategic value of the thorium utilization for the country. A research group called the “Thorium Group”, which realized several conceptual progresses conducting the first project of thorium utilization in PWR. This group’s activities was discontinued with the decision of the Brazilian Government to build a Westinghouse PWR (ANGRA I), in the late sixties. In the beginning of seventies, with the framework of a cooperation agreement of IPEN (Instituto de Pesquisas Energéticas e Nucleares) with the USA General Atomic (GA), several activities including theoretical and experimental, were developed on thorium technology and utilization, mainly for the HTGR concept. This program was discontinued with the signature of the ambitious program of technology transfer signed between Brazil and Germany (1975), for the construction of 8 PWR and the complete light water reactor fuel cycle industry. In late seventies, the biggest R&D program on thorium utilization was developed with the incentive of “International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation” and was conducted by the CDTN (Centro de Desenvolvimento da Tecnologia Nuclear), NUCLEBRAS, and the Germans KFAJülich, Siemens A.G-KWU, and NUKEN. The program started in 1979 and was interrupted in
1988, when there was a complete reformulation of the Brazilian Nuclear Structure, with extinguish of NUCLEBRAS, and CDTN transferred to the CNEN [1,2]. The growth of nuclear ind
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