A source efficient ADS for minor actinides burning

作者：Fokau Andrei^*; Zhang Youpeng; Ishida Shinya; Wallenius Janne

来源：Annals of Nuclear Energy, 2010, 37(4): 540-545.

DOI：10.1016/j.anucene.2009.12.025

Taking advantage of the good neutron economy of nitride fuel, a compact accelerator-driven system (ADS) for burning of minor actinide fuels has been designed, based on the fuel assembly geometry developed for the European Facility for Industrial Transmutation (EFIT) within the EUROTRANS project. The small core size of the new design permits reduction of the size of the spallation target region, which enhances proton source efficiency by about 80% compared to the reference oxide version of EFIT. Additionally, adoption of the austenitic steel 15/15Ti as clad material allows to safely reduce the fuel pin pitch, which leads to an increase of fuel volume fraction and therefore makes the neutron energy spectrum faster, consequently increasing minor actinides fission probabilities. Our calculations show that one can dramatically increase neutron source efficiency up to 0.95 without a significant loss of neutron source intensity, i.e. having high proton source efficiency. Consequently, the accelerator current required for operation of the ADS with a fission power of 201 MWth and a burn-up of 27 GW d/t per year (365 EFPD) is reduced by 67%.

• 出版日期2010-4