球床式高温气冷堆MOX燃料循环优化

Optimization of MOX Fuel Cycles in Pebble Bed HTGR

与压水堆相比,球床式高温气冷堆能在堆芯结构不做明显改变的情况下采用全堆芯装载混合氧化物(MOX)燃料元件。基于250MW球床模块式高温气冷堆堆芯结构,设计了4种球床式高温气冷堆下MOX燃料循环方式,包括铀钚混合的燃料球和独立的钚球与铀球混合装载的等效方式,采用高温气冷堆设计程序VSOP进行分析,比较了初装堆的有效增殖因数、燃料元件在堆芯内滞留时间、卸料燃耗、温度系数等主要物理特性。结果表明:采用纯铀和纯钚两种分离燃料球且铀燃料球循环时间更长的方案,平均卸料燃耗较高,总体性能较其他循环方式优越。

Compared with light water reactor（LWR）,the pebble bed high temperature gas-cooled reactor（HTGR） is able to operate in a full mixed oxide（MOX） fuelled core without significant change to core structure design.Based on a reference design of 250 MW pebble bed HTGR,four MOX fuel cycles were designed and evaluated by VSOP program package,including the mixed Pu-U fuel pebbles and mixed loading of separate Pu-pebbles and U-pebbles.Some important physics features were investigated and compared for these four cycles,such as the effective multiplication factor of initial core,the pebble residence time,discharge burnup,and temperature coefficients.Preliminary results show that the overall performance of one case is superior to other equivalent MOX fuel cycles on condition that uranium fuel elements and plutonium fuel elements are separated as the different fuel pebbles and that the uranium fuel elements are irradiated longer in the core than the plutonium fuel elements,and the average discharge burnup of this case is also higher than others.