Preliminary study on flexible core design of super FBR with multi-axial fuel shuffling

Preliminary study has been conducted on developing a new flexible core design concept for the Supercritical water-cooled Fast Breeder Reactor (Super FBR) with multi-axial fuel shuffling. The proposed new concept focuses on the characteristic large axial coolant density change in supercritical water cooled reactors (SCWRs) when the coolant inlet temperature is below the pseudocritical point and large coolant enthalpy rise is taken in the core for achieving high thermal efficiency. The aim of the concept is to attain both the high breeding performance and good thermal-hydraulic performance at the same time. That is, short Compound System Doubling Time (CSDT) for high breeding, large coolant enthalpy rise for high thermal efficiency, and large core power. The proposed core concept consists of horizontal layers of mixed oxide (MOX) fuels and depleted uranium (DU) blanket layers at different elevation levels. Furthermore, the upper core and the lower core are separated and independent fuel shuffling schemes in these two core regions are considered. The number of fuel batches and fuel shuffling scheme of the upper core were changed to investigate influence of multi-axial fuel shuffling on the core characteristics. The core characteristics are evaluated with-three-dimensional diffusion calculations, which are fully-coupled with thermal-hydraulics calculations based on single channel analysis model. The results indicate that the proposed multi-axial fuel shuffling scheme does have a large influence on CSDT. Further investigations are necessary to develop the core concept. (author)