Advanced design concepts for PWR and BWR high-performance annular fuel assemblies

Sobering electricity supply and demand projections, coupled with the current volatility of energy prices, have underscored the seriousness of the challenges which lay ahead for the utility industry. This research addresses the impending global need for electricity through the development of advanced annular fuel designs with both internal and external cooling which can achieve higher power densities and hence, higher electricity output from the same basic reactor vessel and containment. Therefore the objectives of this project are to determine the optimal geometrical design parameters of an annular fuel assembly for both PWRs and BWRs for the purpose of achieving maximum power density. It is theorized that utility companies can utilize this design through either retrofitting of their existing reactor facilities or incorporation of the fuel design into new plant concepts. For the case of annular fuel for PWRs, a high performance uranium nitride fuel assembly concept capable of achieving a 50% higher power density was successfully developed. It is shown that a 5% enriched UN annular-fuel assembly can operate at 150% power density for about 50 effective-full-power-days more than that of the nominal 17xl7 solid-fuel-pin assembly operating at 100% power density. Furthermore, neutronic simulation times of this assembly was reduced from approximately 2 days per simulation for a Monte Carlo based analysis to approximately 2 minutes for a deterministic based simulation via the development of an appropriate correction factor for the CASMO-4 neutron transport code. It was shown that a 25% increase in U238 number density for the un-poisoned pins and a 35% increase for the 10 weight percent gadolinium nitride poisoned pins produced the optimal plutonium tracking and infinite multiplication factor simulation.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Nuclear Science and Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Ellis, Tyler Shawn

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Mujid S. Kazimi.

• Nuclear Science and Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/41268

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/41268