PROGRESS IN NUCLEAR ENERGY, cilt.78, ss.380-387, 2015 (SCI-Expanded)
The paper aimed to maximize the fuel burnup performance of plutonium and minor actinides fueled pebble bed high temperature reactor (PBMR-400). The PBMR-400 was designed as a reference core. The neutronic calculations were performed by the code combination MCNP-ORIGEN-MONTEBURNS. In this study, neutronic performances of three different types of nuclear fuels (Reactor Grade Plutonium - RGPu; Weapon Grade Plutonium - WGPu and Minor Actinides - MAs) combined with natural uranium were conducted in a PBMR-400 full core. The neutronic performances were compared with the original uranium fuel designed for this reactor. Neutronic calculations showed that 9.6 wt % enriched uranium has a core effective multiplication factor (k(eff)) of 1.2395. Corresponding to this k(eff) values the natural UO2/RG-PuO2; natural UO2/WG-PuO2 and natural UO2/MAO(2) mixture were found 70%/30%, 76%/24% and 63%/37%, respectively. The operation times were computed as similar to 2000, similar to 2500 and 1400 days whereas, the corresponding burnup values were obtained as similar to 163 000, similar to 194 000 and similar to 116 000 MWD/T, respectively, for end of life k(eff) set equal to 1.08. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.