Prospects for Plutonium-recycling in Japan's LWRs

Fertile Free Fuels for Plutonium and Minor Actinides Burning in LWRs

The feasibility of using various uranium-free fuels for plutonium incineration in present light water reactors is investigated. Two major categories of inert matrix fuels are studied: composite ceramic fuel particles dispersed in another ceramic matrix (CERCER) and ceramic fuel particles dispersed into a metallic matrix (CERMET). In the category of CERCER, the current world wide research effort...

Consortium for Advanced Simulation of LWRs

This paper describes a multi-scale modeling approach to compute the large-strain deformation of zirconium alloy cladding, which is of interest to the study of fuel rod behaviors in transient and accident conditions. A Visco-Plastic Self-Consistent (VPSC) polycrystal plasticity model representing polycrystals by weighted orientations of single crystals has been implemented as the constitutive la...

Consortium for Advanced Simulation of LWRs

A standard method for solving coupled multiphysics problems in light water reactors is Picard iteration, which sequentially alternates between solving single physics applications. This solution approach is appealing due to simplicity of implementation and the ability to leverage existing software packages to accurately solve single physics applications. However, there are several drawbacks in t...

Assessment of the Equilibrium State in Reactor-based Plutonium or Transuranics Multi-recycling

An assessment of the radiotoxicity of spent nuclear material and the fuel handling issues associated with plutonium (Pu) or transuranics (TRU) multi-recycling in PWRs using the CORAIL assembly concept has been performed. This necessitated the development of an analytical approach to solve directly for the equilibrium state of repeated recycle, including higher actinide content. The equilibrium ...

Toxicological Profile for Plutonium