Numerical studies of stepwise radial fuel shuffling in a traveling wave reactor

Abstract

The concept of travelling wave reactor (TWR) applies the mechanism of self-sustaining and propagating nuclear fission travelling waves in fertile media of 238U and 232Th to achieve very high fuel utilization. Based on this concept, a stepwise radial fuel shuffling strategy was proposed and applied to a sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) loading metallic 238U fuel. The multi-group deterministic neutronic code ERANOS with JEFF3.1 data library was used as a basic tool to perform the neutronics and burnup calculations. The inward fuel shuffling calculations were first performed in a 1-D cylindrical case for parametric understanding, and then extended to a 2-D R-Z case. The shuffling calculations for the 1-D and 2-D SFR model yielded some interesting results. The asymptotic keff varied parabolically with the characteristic fluence, while the burnup increased linearly. The highest burnup achieved in 2-D case was 38%. The power peak shifted from the fuel outlet side (core centre) to the fuel inlet side (core periphery) in both 1-D and 2-D cases and the corresponding peaking factor decreased dramatically along with the characteristic fluence. The present research demonstrated that the proposed stepwise radial fuel shuffling in the sodium fast reactor achieved the characteristics of the traveling wave reactor.