An analytical approach to fast reactor fuel cycle analysis

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Authors
Alvarez, Jose Maria Sierra
Issue Date
1976-05
Type
Electronic thesis
Thesis
Language
ENG
Keywords
Nuclear engineering
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Abstract
The representation of the depletion process in a (U,Pu) fueled Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor can be greatly simplified, without appreciable loss in accuracy, when assuming that the fissionable isotopes are restricted to those of U-235, U-236, U-238, Pu-239, Pu-240, Pu-24l and Pu-242, and the fission products are lumped into a pseudo-fission product. In the center- core region, where there are no significant spatial effects, space-independent continuous slowing down theory has been used for spectrum calculations whose most significant result is that spectrum-averaged cross sections vary very slightly and in a quasi-linear manner over the exposure ranges considered nowdays. It is also shown that the simplified depletion equations have an analytical solution for all fuel isotopes for the constant spectrum-averaged cross section case, while for the case in which they vary linearly, the analytical solution exists for only some of them. A quadratic correlation with composition, the correlation quantities being the fissile, fertile, pseudo-fission product, control, coolant and structure compositions, which also includes a fuel temperature correction factor, has been introduced and the errors in the spectrum-averaged cross sections are smaller than 3% against the numerical values, for all fuel elements and all cases considered.
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May 1976
School of Engineering
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Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
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