Modeling and system analysis of fuel cycles for nuclear power sustainability (I): Uranium consumption and waste generation

Highlights: • Modeling thirteen fuel cycle options based on equilibrium method. • A quantitative and comprehensive comparison. • Focusing on uranium utilization and waste generation. • Advantages of SFR-involved options are explicit. - Abstract: A complete and well-organized nuclear fuel cycle system is the basis for power generation, and therefore a general study on different nuclear fuel cycle options has been performed to explore strategies for the sustainability of nuclear power. Material flows of thirteen fuel cycle options covering the open fuel cycle option, and semi-closed and closed options, have been analyzed to derive a comprehensive comparison using an equilibrium model, and are mainly focused on the consumption of uranium resources and waste generation. Setting once-through cycling (OT) as the basis, spent fuel after interim storage directly sent to geological disposal without further reprocessing, several key data were derived quantitatively, e.g., spent fuel inventory, waste generation (i.e. low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste with short life (LILW-SL), low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste with long life (LILW-LL), high level waste (HLW)), Pu inventory, and the excavation volume of an underground repository. This investigation covers from the front-end of the fuel cycles to the final disposal, which indicates that SFR-involved options show clear advantages in controlling HLW generation with regard to waste amount, decay heat, and activity. Moreover, an option that employs a sodium fast reactor to burn the TRU recovered from the spent fuel of a pressurized water reactor through pyroprocessing shows predominant advantages over other alternatives due to a reduction in the uranium resource consumption, a smaller proliferation-sensitive material inventory, and the least amount of waste generation. The impacts of the conversion ratios on SFR-involved fuel cycles have also been evaluated