Preliminary Concept Design of Sodium-Cooled Radial Fuel Shuffling Traveling Wave Reactor

Abstract

The concept of traveling wave reactor (TWR) has been investigated for several decades and has been applied to kinds of reactors. Radial fuel shuffling TWR is a new TWR concept, which has been put forward for only a few years by Terra Power LCC. In the present paper, a sodium-cooled radial fuel shuffling TWR is preliminarily designed. To perform neutronic and burn-up investigation, a MCNP-ORIGEN coupled code system, called MCORE, is used. The comparison between calculation results of MCORE and benchmark values showed the calculation ability of MCORE. The calculation results of radial fuel shuffling TWR show that the asymptotic parabolically varies with the shuffling period, while the burn-up increase linearly with shuffling period. The power peak shifts from the core inside to the core outside. To reduce the power peak, shuffling period 450 days is recognized as the best design. The asymptotic is 1.020 and the average burn-up is about 156 MWd/kg-HM.