The Use of Stainless Steel in CANDU Fuel with Recovered Uranium

Abstract

The use of SEU (Slight Enriched Uranium) or RU (Recovered Uranium) fuel might be reluctant in the Korean licensing aspect of reactor safety due to its increase of coolant void reactivity. To design CANFLEX-RU fuel, it has to have equal or smaller coolant void reactivity and power coefficient than those of 37-element he1 bundles in CANDU-6 operation. Therefore, various models of low-void fuels are established and lattice characteristics for each model are analyzed at mid-burnup in this paper. The lattice characteristics of CANFLEX-RU and -ST (30 % Annulus rod) fuel bundles for low-void reactivity are compared with those of 37-element he1 bundles in CANDU-6 operation. The CANFLEX-ST fuel bundle design is preliminary selected for low void reactivity fuel.