Nuclear Design Characteristics of Thorium-Plutonium Fueled Soluble Boron-Free Small

The main advantage of this nuclear design is longer achieved cycle length compared to soluble boron-free design. However, using soluble boron for excess reactivity control of SMR contradicts to the original idea of this reactor. On the moment of writing this article, in all reviewed publications on SMR nuclear design, only enriched UO₂ fuel is used. Due to small size of SMR, fuel is supposed to be enriched up to 4.95 wt% of ²³⁵U, as shown in and. The main goal of this research is to find a loading pattern (LP) for SMR with Th-Pu fuel, which would satisfy all given criteria. In this study, a new LP for SMR was developed using Th-Pu fuel. The results of nuclear characteristics determination show that all initial design criteria including safety-related factors were satisfied. Compared to conventional uranium model of SMR that was discussed in, new Th-Pu model shows longer cycle length, better reactivity balance performance, which allows using less BA, less complicated LP configuration that requires only two types of FA with no difference in loaded fuel composition.