Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Nuclear Engineering, 2004. / Page 126 blank. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 104-106). / The effect of utilizing thorium together with gadolinium, erbium, or boron burnable absorber in BWR fuel assemblies for very long cycle is investigated. Nuclear characteristics such as reactivity and power distributions are evaluated using CASMO-4. Without thorium, the results show that gadolinium enriched in Gd-157 has the lowest reactivity swing throughout the cycle. However, the local peaking factor (LPF) in the assembly at beginning-of-life (BOL) is high. The erbium case shows more reactivity swing but the LPF is lowest of all three cases. B4C case has the highest reactivity at BOL which would have to be suppressed by control rods. The most important advantage of B4C over others is the saving of uranium inventory needed to achieve the target exposure of 15 effective full power years (EFPY). Further analysis for transient conditions must be performed to ensure meeting all transient limits. Use of thorium in place of some burnable poison makes it possible to save some uranium enrichment while achieving equivalent discharge burnup to the case without thorium, but only by about 1 %. The benefit is small because almost the same amount of burnable poison is always required for suppressing excess reactivity throughout the cycle. Since Th-232 functions more like U-238 than burnable poison, this limits the allowed thorium to extend discharge burnup. Since all fuel assembly designs in this study have the same target exposure of 15EFPY, the economic performance of each design can be compared based on the amount and enrichment of both uranium and burnable absorbers for each fuel design. / (cont.) The B4C-Al fuel is most economical in overall cost even with large uncertainties. The overall cost of gadolinium and erbium cases are concluded to be about the same when large uncertainties are considered. / by Yuichiro Inoue. / S.M.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:MIT/oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/17750 |
| Date | January 2004 |
| Creators | Inoue, Yuichiro, 1969- |
| Contributors | Mujid S. Kazimi., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Nuclear Engineering., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering |
| Publisher | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Source Sets | M.I.T. Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 126 p., 4135373 bytes, 4135181 bytes, application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission., http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582 |
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