Neutronic performance evaluation of Plutonium Recycling in two core sizes for a 250 MWt Molten salt reactor

• Published in: Nuclear engineering and design Vol. 415; p. 112733
• Main Authors: Wulandari, Cici, Trianti, Nuri, Permana, Sidik, Kinoshita, Motoyasu, Waris, Abdul
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 15.12.2023
• Subjects: JENDL 4.0; MSR; Neutronic; Plutonium; SRAC; Thorium; Neutronic; Plutonium; MSR; JENDL 4.0; SRAC; Thorium
• ISSN: 0029-5493; 1872-759X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.nucengdes.2023.112733

•Liquid salt in the MSR system offers a distinct approach to fuel utilization.•Recycling Plutonium for non-proliferation and sustainability in the MSR.•Impact of core size and Plutonium grades on neutronic performance on 250 MWt MSR. MSR has a unique feature in the fuel system, using liquid salt as fuel, and has flexibility on material utilization in the fuel, such as Plutonium. Recycling Plutonium into fuel is a good option to increase the non-proliferation and fuel sustainability aspects. This paper investigates the effect of different reactor core sizes and different Plutonium grades in neutronic performances on 250 MWt MSR. The calculation is performed using PIJ and CITATION modules in the SRAC program and JENDL 4.0 as a nuclear data library. The reactor core size is varied into two different sizes (type-A and type-B), where the type-A reactor has double the size of type-B. The variation of Plutonium grades is employed in this study for several fuel cases. The fraction of Plutonium in the salt (PuF4) is optimized based on the obtained reactor criticality for 2000 days of operation time. The results indicate that reactor type-B has a higher PuF4 consumption, and the percentage of plutonium reduction becomes higher than reactor type-A. Additionally, the comparison of neutronic performance on the varied fuel cases is also analyzed in this paper.