Feasibility study on burnable poison credit concept to HTGR fuel fabrication from core specification perspective

Highlight• We confirm the feasibly of BP credit concept to HTGR fuel fabrication from core specification perspective. • We found the boron and gadolinium suit this concept without degradation of core performance. • We confirm the fuel material feasibility for boron added fuel for helium generation. Feasibility study on Burnable Poison (BP) credit concept to High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR) fuel fabrication has been performed. By mixing BP into fuel material in the first place of fuel fabrication, criticality safety is ensured in the all fuel fabrication process even with high enrichment fuel such as 14 wt% used in commercial HTGR. However, the poison effect also degrades the criticality even in the HTGR core, and it may shorten cycle length and achievable burn-up of the core. Therefore, the effect is evaluated by whole core burn-up calculation. As a BP, boron, gadolinium, erbium, and hafnium are investigated. As a result, it is found that boron and gadolinium suit this concept, and the 14 wt% fuel can be fabricated even with severe Light Water Reactor (LWR) class safety measure corresponding to 5 wt%.