Study about sustainable scenario of nuclear fuel cycle in China

As the economy grows, demand of electricity is growing in China. However, building more thermal power plant is obviously improper choice, due to the concern about running out of fossil fuel. According to National Program for Medium-to-Long-Term Scientific and Technological development published by Chinese government, 40 GWe nuclear power capacity will be achieved by 2020. Regarding to the speed of nuclear power plant construction in China now, recent report said that the nuclear capacity might rise to 60 GWe even 70 GWe by 2020 and the further substantial increase to 200 GWe by 2030. However, to guarantee sustainable supply of electricity by nuclear power, a large amount of uranium is needed. While, there is a limitation of uranium resources, too. A light water reactor (LWR) and fast breeder reactor (FBR) matched scenario should be considered to prevent the crisis of running out of nuclear fuel. The purpose of this study is to find out the best LWR-FBR matched scenario which can reduce uranium requirement efficiently. Four scenarios which consist of 10 cases are selected in this study. After simulating each case by two computer codes, it is clear that scenario 3-1 is the most efficient case in the aspect of saving natural uranium. Scenario 3-1 is a scenario that LWRs loaded with MOX fuel partially (MOX fuel is a kind of nuclear fuel which is a mixture of PuO2 and UO2) are introduced in 2020 and then they were replaced by Fast Breeder Reactors in 2050. (author)