dc.contributor.author | Petroski, Robert Carroll | |
dc.contributor.author | Forget, Benoit Robert Yves | |
dc.contributor.author | Forsberg, Charles W | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2019-07-08T16:26:08Z | |
dc.date.available | 2019-07-08T16:26:08Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2011-04 | |
dc.date.submitted | 2010-06 | |
dc.identifier.issn | 0029-5450 | |
dc.identifier.issn | 1943-7471 | |
dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/121519 | |
dc.description.abstract | In a breed-and-burn (B&B) reactor, the reactor is first started with enriched uranium or other fissile material but thereafter can be refueled with natural or depleted uranium. B&B reactors have the potential to achieve >10% uranium utilization in a once-through fuel cycle versus <1% for light water reactors. A newly developed method for analyzing B&B reactors—the “neutron excess” concept—is used to determine the minimum amount of startup fuel needed to establish a desired equilibrium cycle in a minimum burnup B&B reactor. Here, a minimum burnup B&B reactor is defined as one in which neutron leakage is minimized and feed fuel can be discharged at uniform burnup. The neutron excess concept reformulates the k-effective of a system in terms of material depletion quantities: the total number of neutrons absorbed and produced by a given volume of fuel, which are termed “neutron excess quantities.” This concept is useful because neutron excess quantities are straightforward to estimate using simple one-dimensional (1-D) and zero-dimensional (0-D) models. A set of equations is developed that allows the quantity of starter fuel needed to establish a given B&B equilibrium cycle to be expressed in terms of neutron excess quantities. A simple 1-D example of a sodium-cooled, metal fuel reactor with a startup enrichment of 15% is used to illustrate how the method is applied. An estimate for the required amount of starter fuel based on a 0-D depletion model is found to differ by only 3% from the actual amount computed using the 1-D example model. | en_US |
dc.language.iso | en | |
dc.publisher | Informa UK Limited | en_US |
dc.relation.isversionof | http://dx.doi.org/10.13182/nt11-a12311 | en_US |
dc.rights | Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike | en_US |
dc.rights.uri | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ | en_US |
dc.source | Prof. Forget via Chris Sherratt | en_US |
dc.title | Using the Neutron Excess Concept to Determine Starting Fuel Requirements for Minimum Burnup Breed-and-Burn Reactors | en_US |
dc.type | Article | en_US |
dc.identifier.citation | Petroski, Robert et al. "Using the Neutron Excess Concept to Determine Starting Fuel Requirements for Minimum Burnup Breed-and-Burn Reactors." Nuclear Technology 175, 2 (August 2011): 388-400 © 2018 Informa UK Limited | en_US |
dc.contributor.department | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering | en_US |
dc.relation.journal | Nuclear Technology | en_US |
dc.eprint.version | Author's final manuscript | en_US |
dc.type.uri | http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle | en_US |
eprint.status | http://purl.org/eprint/status/PeerReviewed | en_US |
dc.date.updated | 2019-06-20T12:44:57Z | |
dspace.date.submission | 2019-06-20T12:44:58Z | |
mit.journal.volume | 175 | en_US |
mit.journal.issue | 2 | en_US |