Burnup concept for a long-life fast reactor core using MCNPX.

Abstract

This report describes a reactor design with a burnup concept for a long-life fast reactor core that was evaluated using Monte Carlo N-Particle eXtended (MCNPX). The current trend in advanced reactor design is the concept of a small modular reactor (SMR). However, very few of the SMR designs attempt to substantially increase the lifetime of a reactor core, especially without zone loading, fuel reshuffling, or other artificial mechanisms in the core that %E2%80%9Cflatten%E2%80%9D the power profile, including non-uniform cooling, non-uniform moderation, or strategic poison placement. Historically, the limitations of computing capabilities have prevented acceptable margins in the temporal component of the spatial excess reactivity in a reactor design, due primarily to the error in burnup calculations. This research was performed as an initial scoping analysis into the concept of a long-life fast reactor. It can be shown that a long-life fast reactor concept can be modeled using MCNPX to predict burnup and neutronics behavior. The inherent characteristic of this conceptual design is to minimize the change in reactivity over the lifetime of the reactor. This allows the reactor to operate substantially longer at full power than traditional Light Water Reactors (LWRs) or other SMR designs. For the purpose of thismore » study, a single core design was investigated: a relatively small reactor core, yielding a medium amount of power (~200 to 400 MWth). The results of this scoping analysis were successful in providing a preliminary reactor design involving metal U-235/U-238 fuel with HT-9 fuel cladding and sodium coolant at a 20% volume fraction.« less