Characteristics of a different fuel cycle in a PBMR-400 for burning reactor grade plutonium
✍ Scribed by Eben Mulder; Eberhard Teuchert
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 2008
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 805 KB
- Volume
- 238
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0029-5493
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✦ Synopsis
An outstanding feature of the high temperature, gas-cooled, version of a Generation IV type reactor is its versatility in application. Apart from the capacity in high temperature gas-cooled reactors to generate electricity it could desalinate (multi-effect distillation [MED] by deploying excess heat or reverse osmosis by deploying excess electricity), produce hydrogen (by deploying excess electricity), whereas this article showcases the on-line fuelling characteristics of a pebble bed reactor concept for the incineration of reactor grade plutonium, whilst producing electricity.
The VSOP-A system of codes is employed to demonstrate by calculation how the standard PBMR-400 commercial reactor design offers similar inherent safety characteristics with a Pu-Th/U advanced fuel cycle. This implies that no significant design changes are necessary to implement such a fuel cycle. Furthermore, the flexibility of the pebble fuel concept is deployed to house the fertile material in one type of pebble, whilst a second type will contain the fissile or driver material.