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Atomic Energy of Canada Limited the SUPER-CONVERTER OR CA0900534 Atomic Energy of Canada Limited THE SUPER-CONVERTER OR VALUBREEDER A NEAR-BREEDER URANIUM-THORIUM NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE DM-94 by W. BENNETT LEWIS Chalk River, Ontario May, 1968 Reprinted November 1968 AECL-3081 DM-94 THE SUPER-CONVERTER OR VALUBREEDER A NEAR-BREEDER URANIUM-THORIUM NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE by W. Bennett Lewis ABSTRACT A special way of operating a thermal neutron near- breeder reactor with both thorium and natural uranium fuel supported by some extra neutrons produced as cheaply as possible is described and illustrated. Initially the cheapest source of the extra neutrons will be from a low enrichment of the uranium. Tie near and long term economic advantages of such a cycle promise to justify the special name of super- converter or valubreeder. The high credit value of long irradiated thorium fuel is the key to the value gain. The high burn-up of each type of fuel keeps the cost contributions from fuel fabrication and reprocessing low. The claim made for the valubreeder is not that its yield as a near breeder is the highest attainable but that as nuclear power develops to large units and complexes the cycle is likely soon to become, and then to remain, one of the lowest cost overall fuel cycles. AECL-3081 Atomic Energy of Canada Limited Chalk River, Ontario May, 1968 CONTENTS Page 1. General Characteristics 1 2. Essence of the Valubreeder cycle 3 3. Illustrative Example 4 4. Principles of Fuelling Cost Estimates 4 5. Comparison of Fuelling System in a Reference 6 Reactor 6. Standard Cost Assignments and Further Details 6 of Analysis and Results 7. Further General Discussion 12 8. Near Term Applications 15 9. Long Term Applications 16 Appendix I Fuelling Cost Evaluation Appendix II Appropriate value of (1 + B2Mz)/f Appendix III Effective cross-section for U-238 in BOUT program Appendix IV Input Data for BOUT tables THE SUPER-CONVERTER OR VALUBREEDER A NEAR-BREEDER URANIUM-THORIUM NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE by W. Bennett Lewis 1. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS One economic characteristic sought in the design of fast neutron breeder reactors is to achieve a fuel' doubling time suffi­ ciently short to pay for the fuel inventory and, hopefully, even for the full fuel cycle. If the value of the extra fuel bred is less than the carrying charges on the inventory the net fuelling cost would still be positive even if there were no cotts of fabrication and reprocessing. When these other costs are added in there is little real hope that the breeding gain will pay for the full fuel cycle or, in other words, yield a net negative fuel­ ling cost. A special way of operating a thorium thermal neutron near-breeder offers to match or better the realistic economic characteristics of a fast breeder fuel cycle. The net fissile fuel credit, that is the credit minus the initial basic inventory value, without fabrication cost, can exceed charges on the basic inventory. Moreover the fuel turnover time can be so short that the doubling time of inventory value is only a few years. This way of operating seems to deserve a special name so will be called the super-converter or valubreeder. It may be noted that a CANDU natural uranium reactor operating without recycle shares these economic characteristics. For example, natural uranium valued now at $16/kgU after yielding 9.5 MWd/kgU in perhaps 400 days leaves 2.73 g fissile plutonium/kg U worth, at $10/g fiss.Pu, $27.3. In such operation, however, the fuel fabrication and processing costs per megawatt-day and per kgU are quite high relative to these values. The claim to be made for the valubreeder is not that its yield as a near breeder is the highest attainable but that as nuclear power develops it is likely soon to become, and then to remain., one of the lowest cost overall fuel cycles. It has been shown1'that the neutron economy of a near breeder can be so good on a thorium cycle that adequate supplies of uranium seem assured for many centuries. Typically a kilogram of natural uranium could yield 30 to 60 thermal megawatt- days. Not only is this yield of energy so large that relatively little uranium is required, but also the cost of power generated is - 2 - relatively insensitive to the price of uranium ($l/thermal MWd corresponds typically to 1/7 mill/ekWh or less). Since a higher price for uranium is permissible the amount available is vastly extended. The use of reactors of poor neutron economy in the overall system, although still rapidly growing, will be limited by increasing inventory and supply costs of the fuel cycle. Although it would inherently be possible to support more exten­ sive use of such reactors by association with breeder reactors, it is doubtful whether they would remain economically competitive when the cost of uranium rises. The initial valubreeder cycle, although economical in its use of uranium, is not more so than a simple natural uranium heavy water reactor but its yield of uranium-2 3 3 leads the way to a much lower total consumption of uranium when market prices make this desirable. For a typical CANDU reactor the fuelling cost estimates shown in Table I have been derived on comparable bases. TABLE I Fuelling Costs in Reference CANDU Reactor including Inventory and Interest Charges Standard Std.+ $10/kgU. Std. + $10/kg. Std. + ilO/kg Fuel Cycle Costs & related U-Fabriaation U or Th charges Pvocessing mill/kWh Natural Uranium 0. 546 0.698 0.698 no processing h=0.152 A=0.152 - Natural Uranium 0. 376 0.453 0.528 0. 513 with Plutonium h=0.077 A=0.152 h=0.137 Credit Enriched Uranium 0. 393 0.487 0.482 0. 471 with Plutonium h = 0.094 h> = 0.089 L=0. 078 Credit Uranium-233 + Th. 0. 477 0.545 0. 500 with U-233 Credit L=0.068 A=0.023 Enriched Uranium 0. 296 0.367 0.345 0. 353 + Thorium (Valu­ h=0.071 t\=0.049 A=0.057 breeder) with Pu and U-233 Credit NOTl 1: The table is based on 1967 U.S. dollar values and details given in Table II - 3 - The fuel cycles selected for Table I are chosen to be both practical and close to an optimum. By adopting standard unit costs and indicating how the resulting fuelling cost changes with these values, it is possible to appreciate the advantages and limitations of the cycles and how preferences would change when, for example, processing costs fall or the price of uranium rises. For this same reason figures are given to 0.001 mill/kWh. although changes of 0.1 mill/kWh may easily be introduced by altering the circumstances. The valubreeder fuel cycle can be applied in any of the CANDU reactors whether PHW, BHW, BLW or organic liquid cooled2. The full advantages are gained only when the neutron economy of the reactor is very good. The optimum specific power range for the valubreeder fuel appears to be 35 to 55 thermal megawatts per tonne of heavy element, uranium or thorium. This rating is higher than normally adopted in CANDU reactors and suggests an extra advantage applicable especially to the PHW that the output power of the reactor core can be very considerably increased, with no large economic penalty. Given the required pump and heat-exchanger capacity, the output from some designs could be doubled. 2. ESSENCE OF THE VALUBKEEDER CYCLE The essence of the valubreeder is to make the fuel supply predominantly natural uranium, together with a smaller amount of plain thorium, and as a third component a small amount of the cheapest available fissile material. This small component is liable to be the most costly, it could be separated U-235, or plutonium, or it could be a slight enrichment of some or all of the natural uranium. In later years it might be U-233 recovered from the thorium. Despite these relative amounts of feed about 40% of the power comes from the fission of uranium-233 bred into the thorium and most of the fuel credit comes from the high value of the residual U-2 33. In order to benefit quickly from the U-233 credit the thorium is operated at a considerably higher neutron flux than would be optimum for maximum breeding gain per cycle. Having satisfied these essential conditions, there remains considerable flexibility of the fuel cycle and quite complex mixtures and fuel bundle movements may be found to give lower fuelling costs. In the face of all this permissible flexibility a simple illustrative case has been selected to describe how a valubreeder cycle operates and is evaluated. - 4 - 3. ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE Part of the merit of the valubreeder cycle lies in the economical approach over several years to the equilibrium cycle. For simplicity, however, the equilibrium condition is assumed for the description. The reactor is assumed continuously fuelled on-power with the standard CANDU 0.5 m long fuel bundles. It is therefore a permissible approximation to average the properties of the fuels charged into the reactor over a selected fairly long period of time. This will be chosen to give an average irradia­ tion of 6.0 n/kb (i.e. 6 x 1021 n/cm2) which at an average 13 2 8 neutron flux of 7 x 10 n/cm /sec.# takes -f x 10 seconds or 8.57 x 107 sec. = 9 92 days = 2.7 full power years. The average irradiation of the thorium when withdrawn will be set at this level,6.0 n/kb.
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