Dynamic analysis of the dry process fuel sodium-cooled fast reactor cycle

The Korean nuclear fuel cycle with the dry-processed oxide fuel sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) has been analyzed by the dynamic analysis method. In addition to the SFR, the current operating Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) and Canadian Deuterium Uranium (CANDU) reactors were considered. For the analysis, the equilibrium fuel cycle of two reference cores of the SFR were considered: a Hybrid BN-600 benchmark core with an enlarged lattice pitch and a modified BN-600 core. In the reactor scenario, the existing nuclear power plant construction plan was considered up to 2016, while the nuclear demand growth rate from the year 2016 was assumed to be 1%. In this study, the spent fuel inventory as well as the amount of plutonium, minor actinides (MA) and fission products (FP) of the recycling fuel cycle was estimated and compared to that of the once-through fuel cycle. From the results of the once-through fuel cycle, it is known that the demand grows up to 64 GWe and total amount of spent fuel would be ∼102 kt in 2100. When the dry-processed fuel SFR scenario is implemented, it is expected that the total spent fuel inventory can be reduced by ∼80%. Also, the plutonium inventory can be reduced by maximum ∼30%. However it was found that the SFR scenario does not contribute to reduce the amount of MA and FP, which is important when designing a repository. For the further destruction of MA, an actinide burner can be considered in the future nuclear fuel cycle