An improved method for fuel cycle analysis at equilibrium and its application to the study of fast burner reactors with variable conversion ratio

摘要

Studies related to advanced fuel cycles require a considerable amount of analysis to assess performances both of the reactor cores and of the associated fuel cycles. A physics analysis should provide a sound understanding of major trends and features, in order to provide guidelines for detailed studies. In this paper we present an improved version of a generalization of the Bateman equation that allows performing analysis at equilibrium for a large number of systems. It is shown that the method reproduces very well the results obtained with full depletion calculations. The method is applied to explore the features of the fuel cycles parameters related to fast reactors with different fuel types, different conversion ratios (CR) and different MA/Pu ratios in the fuel feed. It is shown that for cores with CR below -0.8, the increase of neutron doses and decay heat can represent a significant drawback to implement the corresponding reactors and associated fuel cycles.