Design study of long-life PWR using thorium cycle

Design study of long-life Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) using thorium cycle has been performed. Thorium cycle in general has higher conversion ratio in the thermal spectrum domain than uranium cycle. Cell calculation, Burn-up and multigroup diffusion calculation was performed by PIJ-CITATION-SRAC code using libraries based on JENDL 3.2. The neutronic analysis result of infinite cell calculation shows that 231Pa better than 237Np as burnable poisons in thorium fuel system. Thorium oxide system with 8% 233U enrichment and 7.6∼ 8% 231Pa is the most suitable fuel for small-long life PWR core because it gives reactivity swing less than 1% Δk/k and longer burn up period (more than 20 year). By using this result, small long-life PWR core can be designed for long time operation with reduced excess reactivity as low as 0.53% Δk/k and reduced power peaking during its operation.