Using the Neutron Excess Concept to Determine Starting Fuel Requirements for Minimum Burnup Breed-and-Burn Reactors
In a breed-and-burn (B&B) reactor, the reactor is first started with enriched uranium or other fissile material but thereafter can be refueled with natural or depleted uranium. B&B reactors have the potential to achieve >10% uranium utilization in a once-through fuel cycle versus <1% f...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Informa UK Limited
2019
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/121519 |
| _version_ | 1826211195596570624 |
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| author | Petroski, Robert Carroll Forget, Benoit Robert Yves Forsberg, Charles W |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering Petroski, Robert Carroll Forget, Benoit Robert Yves Forsberg, Charles W |
| author_sort | Petroski, Robert Carroll |
| collection | MIT |
| description | In a breed-and-burn (B&B) reactor, the reactor is first started with enriched uranium or other fissile material but thereafter can be refueled with natural or depleted uranium. B&B reactors have the potential to achieve >10% uranium utilization in a once-through fuel cycle versus <1% for light water reactors. A newly developed method for analyzing B&B reactors—the “neutron excess” concept—is used to determine the minimum amount of startup fuel needed to establish a desired equilibrium cycle in a minimum burnup B&B reactor. Here, a minimum burnup B&B reactor is defined as one in which neutron leakage is minimized and feed fuel can be discharged at uniform burnup. The neutron excess concept reformulates the k-effective of a system in terms of material depletion quantities: the total number of neutrons absorbed and produced by a given volume of fuel, which are termed “neutron excess quantities.” This concept is useful because neutron excess quantities are straightforward to estimate using simple one-dimensional (1-D) and zero-dimensional (0-D) models. A set of equations is developed that allows the quantity of starter fuel needed to establish a given B&B equilibrium cycle to be expressed in terms of neutron excess quantities. A simple 1-D example of a sodium-cooled, metal fuel reactor with a startup enrichment of 15% is used to illustrate how the method is applied. An estimate for the required amount of starter fuel based on a 0-D depletion model is found to differ by only 3% from the actual amount computed using the 1-D example model. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T15:02:05Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/121519 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T15:02:05Z |
| publishDate | 2019 |
| publisher | Informa UK Limited |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1215192022-10-02T00:09:39Z Using the Neutron Excess Concept to Determine Starting Fuel Requirements for Minimum Burnup Breed-and-Burn Reactors Petroski, Robert Carroll Forget, Benoit Robert Yves Forsberg, Charles W Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering In a breed-and-burn (B&B) reactor, the reactor is first started with enriched uranium or other fissile material but thereafter can be refueled with natural or depleted uranium. B&B reactors have the potential to achieve >10% uranium utilization in a once-through fuel cycle versus <1% for light water reactors. A newly developed method for analyzing B&B reactors—the “neutron excess” concept—is used to determine the minimum amount of startup fuel needed to establish a desired equilibrium cycle in a minimum burnup B&B reactor. Here, a minimum burnup B&B reactor is defined as one in which neutron leakage is minimized and feed fuel can be discharged at uniform burnup. The neutron excess concept reformulates the k-effective of a system in terms of material depletion quantities: the total number of neutrons absorbed and produced by a given volume of fuel, which are termed “neutron excess quantities.” This concept is useful because neutron excess quantities are straightforward to estimate using simple one-dimensional (1-D) and zero-dimensional (0-D) models. A set of equations is developed that allows the quantity of starter fuel needed to establish a given B&B equilibrium cycle to be expressed in terms of neutron excess quantities. A simple 1-D example of a sodium-cooled, metal fuel reactor with a startup enrichment of 15% is used to illustrate how the method is applied. An estimate for the required amount of starter fuel based on a 0-D depletion model is found to differ by only 3% from the actual amount computed using the 1-D example model. 2019-07-08T16:26:08Z 2019-07-08T16:26:08Z 2011-04 2010-06 2019-06-20T12:44:57Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0029-5450 1943-7471 https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/121519 Petroski, Robert et al. "Using the Neutron Excess Concept to Determine Starting Fuel Requirements for Minimum Burnup Breed-and-Burn Reactors." Nuclear Technology 175, 2 (August 2011): 388-400 © 2018 Informa UK Limited en http://dx.doi.org/10.13182/nt11-a12311 Nuclear Technology Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf Informa UK Limited Prof. Forget via Chris Sherratt |
| spellingShingle | Petroski, Robert Carroll Forget, Benoit Robert Yves Forsberg, Charles W Using the Neutron Excess Concept to Determine Starting Fuel Requirements for Minimum Burnup Breed-and-Burn Reactors |
| title | Using the Neutron Excess Concept to Determine Starting Fuel Requirements for Minimum Burnup Breed-and-Burn Reactors |
| title_full | Using the Neutron Excess Concept to Determine Starting Fuel Requirements for Minimum Burnup Breed-and-Burn Reactors |
| title_fullStr | Using the Neutron Excess Concept to Determine Starting Fuel Requirements for Minimum Burnup Breed-and-Burn Reactors |
| title_full_unstemmed | Using the Neutron Excess Concept to Determine Starting Fuel Requirements for Minimum Burnup Breed-and-Burn Reactors |
| title_short | Using the Neutron Excess Concept to Determine Starting Fuel Requirements for Minimum Burnup Breed-and-Burn Reactors |
| title_sort | using the neutron excess concept to determine starting fuel requirements for minimum burnup breed and burn reactors |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/121519 |
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