Computational Study of DRAGON for Minor Actinide Transmutation

The Minor Actinides (MA), a sort of long-lived and high-level radioactive nuclides is one of the most important part in the nuclear spent fuel. The MA is harmful to the ecological system because of its peculiar physical and chemical property. How to handle the MA in the spent fuel has always been one of the most important issues in nuclear waste management all over the world. The MA can be transmuted into stable or short-lived nuclides by neutron irradiation, and this is the most effective way to manage those high-level wastes. The PWR is the main reactor type at commercial operation in China, and the MA has a larger capture and fission cross section in the thermal reactor, therefore the study on the transmutation of the MA in the PWR has an important significance in China. This paper has used the DRAGON to build a simplified model of the AP1000 PWR fuel assembly and calculated the impacts on the k-effective of the fuel assembly, the fuel burnup, the fuel cycle and core lifetime when the MA uniformly mixed with the burnable poison or cladded on the burnable poison. The results show that: when the MA is added to the burnable poison in the above two methods, burnup level of the fuel assembly decreases and the fuel cycle of the core lengthens. It also has an impact on the k-effective of the fuel assembly, extending the time of the fuel assembly maintaining above the critical and has a favorable impact on core lifetime.