Core design studies for a 1000 MW th Advanced Burner Reactor

Abstract

This paper describes the core design and performance characteristics of 1000 MW th Advanced Burner Reactor (ABR) core concepts with a wide range of TRU conversion ratio. Using ternary metal alloy and mixed oxide fuels, reference core designs of a medium TRU conversion ratio of ∼0.7 were developed by trade-off between burnup reactivity loss and TRU conversion ratio. Based on these reference core concepts, TRU burner cores with low and high TRU conversion ratios were developed by changing the intra-assembly design parameters and core configurations. Reactor performance characteristics were evaluated in detail, including equilibrium cycle core performances, reactivity feedback coefficients, and shutdown margins. The results showed that by employing different assembly designs, a wide range of TRU conversion ratios from ∼0.2 to break-even can be achieved within the same core without introducing significant performance and safety penalties.