Toward very high burnups, a strategy for plutonium utilization in pressurized water reactors

The aim of using plutonium more efficiently in pressurized water reactors h as led to objectives of high and very high burnups. The reasons are not onl y economic, but also related to the optimization of the utilization of fiss ile material and to increased proliferation resistance. Here are presented the reflections that contributed to the definition of a R&D programme condu cted by the Nuclear Reactors Division (DRN) of the Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique (CEA) in this domain in the nineties. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B .V. All rights reserved.