Burnup analysis of the VVER-1000 reactor using thorium-based fuel

Abstract

Abstract This paper aims to investigate 232Th/233U fuel cycles in a VVER-1000 reactor through calculation by computer. The 3D core geometry of VVER-1000 system was designed using the Serpent Monte Carlo 1.1.19 Code. The Serpent Code using parallel programming interface (Message Passing Interface-MPI), was run on a workstation with 12-core and 48 GB RAM. 232Th/235U/238U oxide mixture was considered as fuel in the core, when the mass fraction of 232Th was increased as 0.05–0.1–0.2–0.3–0.4 respectively, the mass fraction of 238U equally was decreased. In the system, the calculations were made for 3 000 MW thermal power. For the burnup analyses, the core is assumed to deplete from initial fresh core up to a burnup of 16 MWd/kgU without refuelling considerations. In the burnup calculations, a burnup interval of 360 effective full power days (EFPDs) was defined. According to burnup, the mass changes of the 232Th, 233U, 238U, 237Np, 239Pu, 241Am and 244Cm were evaluated, and also flux and criticality of the system were calculated in dependence of the burnup rate.