Equilibrium core cluster for AHWR-LEU: an alternate fuel cycle

Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) is being designed as a 920 MW(th) vertical pressure tube type reactor cooled by boiling light water and moderated by heavy water. AHWR is being designed for thorium utilization and technological demonstration of the thorium fuel cycle. AHWR has many advanced safety features like negative coolant void reactivity, heat removal through natural circulation. The on-power refuelling is also one of its important design features. The reactor, however, offers enough flexibility to accommodate different kinds of fuel cycles. Few cases were studied to achieve high discharge burnup (∼ 60.0 GWd/Te) by using Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) consisting of 19.75% 235U as external feed in thorium oxide fuel in AHWR. The design of equilibrium core cluster for AHWR-LEU core was chosen to facilitate the on-power refuelling discharge burnup core. This paper describes about the design of the equilibrium cluster for AHWR-LEU core. (author)