Thorium-based fuel cycles in the modular high temperature reactor

Abstract

Large stockpiles of civil-grade as well as weapons-grade plutonium have been accumulated in the world from nuclear power or other programs of different countries. One alternative for the management of the plutonium is to incinerate it in the high temperature reactor (HTR). The thorium-based fuel cycle was studied in the modular HTR to reduce weapons-grade plutonium stockpiles, while producing no additional plutonium or other transuranic elements. Three thorium-uranium fuel cycles were also investigated. The thorium absorption cross sections of the resolved and unresolved resonances were generated using the ZUTDGL code based on existing resonance data. The equilibrium core of the modular HTR was calculated and analyzed by means of the code VSOP'94. The results show that the modular HTR can incinerate most of the initially loaded plutonium amounting to about 95.3% net <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">239</sup> pU for weapons-grade plutonium and can effectively utilize the uranium and thorium in the thorium-uranium fuel cycles.