Analysis of potential advanced thorium based fuel for EPR reactor

Abstract

As thorium based fuels have benefits in terms of radio-toxicity there are however challenges in terms of reproceßing the spent thorium based fuel. The database and experience of thorium fuels and thorium fuel cycles are very limited , as compared to UO2 and (U,Pu)O2 fuels, and need to be augmented before large investments are made for commercial utilization of thorium fuels and fuel cycles. That is why, as the first step of studying the thorium application feasibility, once through thorium based fuel cycle analysis for energy production and radioactive waste transmutation was undertaken, which does not require the technically difficult reproceßing of the spent fuel. The idea is to analyze the thorium based fuel application in the open cycle feasibility study in the existing light water reactors with minimal modifications in order to exploit them. Preliminary analysis of thorium based fuel application in the EPR reactor have shown that once through thorium fuel cycle can be reached with difficulty. It is inferred that the 233U concentration tends to saturation value which does not depend on power density while the kinetics of reaching the saturation value depends on it. Monte Carlo methodology calculations for the contribution to the analysis of thorium based fuel application in the EPR reactor and in the accelerated driven systems (ADS) were used.