On the Criticality Safety of Transuranic Sodium Fast Reactor Fuel Transport Casks

This work addresses the neutronic performance and criticality safety issues of transport casks for fuel pertaining to low conversion ratio sodium cooled fast reactors, conventionally known as Advanced Burner Reactors. The criticality of a one, three, seven and 19-assembly cask capacity is presented. Both dry 'helium' and flooded 'water' filled casks are considered. No credit for fuel burnup or fission products was assumed. As many as possible of the conservatisms used in licensing light water reactor universal transport casks were incorporated into this SFR cask criticality design and analysis. It was found that at 7-assemblies or more, adding moderator to the SFR cask increases criticality margin. Also, removal of MAs from the fuel increases criticality margin of dry casks and takes a slight amount of margin away for wet casks. Assuming credit for borated fuel tube liners, this design analysis suggests that as many as 19 assemblies can be loaded in a cask if limited purely by criticality safety. If no credit for boron is assumed, the cask could possibly hold seven assemblies if low conversion ratio fast reactor grade fuel and not breeder reactor grade fuel is assumed. The analysis showed that there is a need for new cask designs for fast reactors spent fuel transportation. There is a potential of modifying existing transportation cask design as the starting point for fast reactor spent fuel transportation.