Effects of cooling interval time in melt and refining process for CANDLE burning

• Published in: Annals of nuclear energy Vol. 105; pp. 144 - 149
• Main Authors: Karim, Julia Abdul, Nishiyama, Jun, Obara, Toru
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.07.2017
• Subjects: CANDLE; Cooling time; Excess reactivity; Melt and refining; Nuclides density distribution; CANDLE; Nuclides density distribution; Excess reactivity; Cooling time; Melt and refining
• ISSN: 0306-4549; 1873-2100
• DOI: 10.1016/j.anucene.2017.03.011

•The melt and refining process with cooling time was applied to the CANDLE burning.•The effect of the cooling during melt and refining process was investigated for one, two, four and eight years cooling.•The change of effective multiplication factors in the equilibrium condition depends on the cooling time.•If the cooling time is equal to or less than 4years, it will give little effects on the effective multiplication factor.•Burnup performance and neutron flux has not changed a lot by the cooling. The effects of cooling during the melt and refining process in a CANDLE burring reactor was investigated. The introduction of cooling time during the melt and refining process had an impact on the CANDLE burning. A cooling time of one, two, four and eight years were simulated at each melt and refining cycle. The effects of cooling on excess reactivity varied with the cooling time. A longer cooling time may reduce the excess reactivity of a CANDLE burning reactor in the equilibrium condition to negative. In this case, the core design of the CANDLE might need to be optimized to compensate for the decrease of excess reactivity due to the accumulation of Am-241 during the cooling period.