Once-through thorium fuel cycle evaluation for TVA's Browns Ferry-3 Boiling Water Reactor

This report documents benchmark evaluations to test thorium lattice predictive methods and neutron cross sections against available data and summarizes specific evaluations of the once-through thorium cycle when applied to the Browns Ferry-3 BWR. It was concluded that appreciable uncertainties in thorium cycle nuclear data cloud the ability to reliably predict the fuel cycle performance and that power reactor irradiations of ThO2 rods in BWRs are desirable to resolve uncertainties. Benchmark evaluations indicated that the ENDF/B-IV data used in the evaluations should cause an underprediction of U-233/ThO2 fuel reactivity, and, therefore, the results of the preliminary evaluations completed under the program should be conservative