Examination of the use of thorium-based fuel for burning minor actinides in European sodium cooled fast reactor

Abstract To reduce the potential and volume of radiotoxicity of radioactive wastes, minor actinides (MAs) elements recovered from discharged fuel are to be recycled. In this context, the main aim of this work is to examine the possibility of using thorium-based fuel for burning extra MAs in the fourth generation European Sodium cooled Fast Reactor (ESFR). For that MCNPX transport code was used to design a representative fuel assembly of this concept. The reference uranium-based fuel was uniformly replaced by thorium mixed with different fractions of MAs and burned for 2050 effective full power days. The influence of MAs on the evolution of reactivity and fuel transmutation is being investigated to ensure the performance of the fuel. Also, different neutronic and safety parameters such as neutron yield, neutron spectrum, neutron flux, effective delayed neutron fraction, Doppler constant, sodium void reactivity coefficient, were computed and their change with MAs content was investigated. Results indicate that recycling of MAs in ESFR using thorium-based fuel has a positive effect on reactivity and transmutation evolution but on other hand has a negative effect on safety parameters.