DESIGN STUDY AND ANALYSIS OF PB-BI COOLED FAST REACTOR WITH AXIAL MODIFIED CANDLE BURNUP STRATEGY

• Main Author: Thoriq Hidayatullah, Ibnu
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/50338
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Nuclear energy is one of the energy sources with the lowest carbon emissions. However, the construction of nuclear power plants is difficult because of problems such as fuel that requires enrichment. Hence, reactor design that can be operated using natural uranium is needed. This type of reactor design can be accomplished using Modified CANDLE burnup strategy. Modified CANDLE is the modified version of CANDLE (Constant Axial Shape of Neutron Flux, Nuclide Densities and Power Shape during Life of Energy Production) burnup strategy. In this research, the reactor core is divided into 10 discrete regions in axial direction. Refueling is done every 10 years. At refueling, each fuel in their region is shifted 1 region to the next region number, and then fresh fuel is put into the first region. This MCANDLE burnup strategy is applied to Pb-Bi cooled fast reactor. The fuel used are uranium nitride and thorium nitride. Cladding used is SS316L. This research is aiming to analyze neutronic aspect by carrying out variation of reactor power, variation of fuel volume fraction, and variation of fuel by mixing uranium and thorium. Optimization also carried out on fuel mixture variation. Calculation is conducted using SRAC (Standard thermal Reactor Analysis Code system) with JENDL-4.0 nuclear data library. Reactor power are varied from 650 MW to 800 MW with interval of 25 MW. Fuel volume fraction are varied from 50% to 70% with interval of 5%. Variation of thorium in fuel mixture are 20%, 40%, 50%, and 60%. The result from this research are the effects of each variation on neutronic parameter such as k-eff, burnup level, k-inf, and atomic density of U- 238 and Pu-239; and also, the optimal parameter for uranium-thorium mixture fuel.