Double solitary waves reactor

Abstract Breed-and-burn reactors are a type of fast reactor that can directly burn depleted uranium or nature uranium with once through fuel cycle. The breed-and-burn reactors are composed of ignition zones and breeding zones. One of the significant challenges in practice is that high peak neutron flux levels lead to high radiation damage for solid fuels and cladding, and also lead to high peak power density. In this study, double solitary waves reactor (DSWR), likely breed-and-burn reactors but features double separated ignition zones, were proposed to reduce peak neutron flux and peak power density by half in order to provide the feasible of practical applications, and still could not reduce total output power. The breed-and-burn reactors with double separated ignition zones would generate double solitary waves propagating in nonlinear system. The double solitary waves were observed when DSWR was operating normally, and a nonlinear superposition effect was discovered. The DSWR was a fast spectrum reactor cooled by liquid mental Pb–Bi. The wave amplitude or neutron flux, the evolution of nuclides and the nonlinear superposition effect were analyzed to evaluated the feasibility of DSWR. Finally, the optimized scheme was adopted then discharged fuel burnup decreased from 380 GWd/T to ∼ 200 GWd/T in breeding zone to yield to engineering technology.