Abstract
Because of the high burnup achieved by thorium fuels, they are attractive for utilization in the so-called advanced high temperature reactor (AHTR), which is a new reactor that merges HTR and molten salt reactor (MSR) designs. Based on a typical fuel block of AHTR, the neutronic characteristics of seed and blanket (S&B) fuel blocks with different driver fuels, including the infinite multiplication factor (kinf), conversion ratio (CR), discharge burnup, energy spectra, equilibrium mass of U-233 and temperature coefficient of reactivity (αT), were investigated based on DRAGON V4. The seed is assumed to contain thorium with either U-233, RGrPu, WGrPu or WGrU while the blanket is always thorium. In terms of maximizing discharge burnup, 6 kg heavy metal (HM) per fuel block was selected for the comparison analysis of the four drivers. The same configuration of S&B 4 + 5 was used for all the investigated fuel blocks. It is shown that the kinf has the highest value for the fuel block with U-233 as driver fuel (Th/U233) and decreases passing to Th/WGrU, Th/WGrPu and Th/RGrPu. Though Th/RGrPu achieves the highest CR, Th/U233 achieves the deepest discharge burnup because of its high kinf. The temperature coefficients of reactivity of fuel (αTF) and moderator (αTM) of Th/RGrPu, Th/WGrPu, and Th/WGrU are all negative. However, αTF of Th/U233 fuel block is negative but its αTM is positive.
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