Assessment of plutonium inventory management in the french nuclear fleet with the fuel cycle simulator CLASS

F. Courtin (1) , Nicolas Thiollière (1) , X. Doligez (2) , M. Ernoult (2) , B. Leniau (1) , J. Liang (2) , B. Mouginot , A.-A. Zakari-Issoufou (2)

1 SUBATECH - Laboratoire de physique subatomique et des technologies associées
2 IJCLab - Laboratoire de Physique des 2 Infinis Irène Joliot-Curie

The ASTRID French project aimed at designing, building and operating a sodium fast reactor cooled with liquid sodium. One of the goals of the project was to demonstrate the feasibility of the plutonium multi-recycling in a fast spectrum. Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA - Atomic & Alternative Energies Commission) has recently announced the abandon of the project which involves that no sodium fast reactor project is planned in France. As a consequence, there is a real interest in assessing technical feasibility for alternative plutonium management. In this work, the plutonium multi-recycling in PWR is assessed from fuel cycle simulations performed with the library CLASS developed by CNRS/IN2P3. The technical conditions for plutonium incineration and stabilization are investigated. It is shown that plutonium can be stabilized with 30% of PWR using multi-reprocessed plutonium in MOX fuel, the rest being composed by PWR loaded with UOX. The transuranic (plutonium and minor actinides) stabilization involves a plutonium incineration. For this reason, around 50% of PWR using multi-reprocessed plutonium is required and the nuclear power has to decrease. In this paper, the methodology and the output analysis are described in detail.

Domaines: Physique Nucléaire Théorique [nucl-th]

F. Courtin, Nicolas Thiollière, X. Doligez, M. Ernoult, B. Leniau, et al.. Assessment of plutonium inventory management in the french nuclear fleet with the fuel cycle simulator CLASS. Nucl.Eng.Des., 2021, pp.111042. ⟨10.1016/j.nucengdes.2020.111042⟩. ⟨hal-03197515⟩