Technology characteristics of transitions to solid-fueled and molten-salt fast reactor fleets

E. Hoffman, B. Feng, B. Betzler, E. Davidson, A. Worrall

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperpeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

Under the Evaluation and Screening study [1], the continuous recycle of uranium and transuranics in fast reactors was identified as one of most promising future nuclear fuel cycles in the United States. After the completion of the study, many example scenarios of transition to this fuel cycle using various technology assumptions were evaluated. The focus of this paper is on the technology characteristics and their impacts that arise from the choice of deploying a fleet of solid-fueled sodium-cooled fast reactors (SFRs) or a fleet of liquid-fueled molten-salt-cooled fast reactors (MSFRs) for this future fuel cycle. This study found three key technology characteristics that are likely to have the most significant impact on the time-dependent supply and demand of fissile material: 1) the amount of fissile material required to deploy a given capacity, 2) the additional material needed to transition from the deployment of that new capacity to its steady-state average system inventory, and 3) the maximum practical fissile material net breeding rate that is achievable. Each factor is a combination of physics and practical design choices. With little practical experience to reference, a range is considered for each technical characteristic and performance was evaluated over a range of possible future scenarios to provide general conclusions on the differences in transition performance between deploying SFRs or MSFRs.

Original languageEnglish
Pages188-194
Number of pages7
StatePublished - 2020
Event14th International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Conference, GLOBAL 2019 and Light Water Reactor Fuel Performance Conference, TOP FUEL 2019 - Seattle, United States
Duration: Sep 22 2019Sep 27 2019

Conference

Conference14th International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Conference, GLOBAL 2019 and Light Water Reactor Fuel Performance Conference, TOP FUEL 2019
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySeattle
Period09/22/1909/27/19

Funding

This work was supported under U.S. Department of Energy contract DE-AC02-06CH11357 and funded through the Fuel Cycle Options Campaign within the U.S. DOE Office of Nuclear Energy.

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