STUDY ON FUEL HANDLING-SYSTEM SUITABLE FOR MA LOADING OF COMMERCIAL FBR

On the commercial stage of FBR, the improvement of the fuel handling s ystem which directly removes spent fuels from the reactor without in-v essel storage, will be useful to enhance an effective utilization of n uclear resources. Minor actinides (MA) loading measures such as the he terogeneous loading (two kinds of MA contents-fuel assemblies are load ed to the same reactor) and the homogeneous loading were extracted, an d their suitability for the commercial FBR was estimated from standpoi nts of the fuel handling system cost and the contribution to the smoot h fuel recycle flow. And it was clarified that the heterogeneous MA lo ading was useful for the transition period from LWRs to FBRs due to th e promotion for the Pu utilization and the MA transmutation, and the h omogeneous MA loading for the period of only FBRs due to the reduction for the TRU (Pu and MA) inventory outside the reactor. (C) 1997 Publi shed by Elsevier Science Ltd.