Citation:
M. Yildiz Sakarya and S.S. Chirayath, “Proliferation Resistance Analysis of Multiple Recycling of Re-enriched Reprocessed Uranium Fuel in Commercial Light Water Reactors”, INMM/ESARDA Joint Annual Meeting, 22-26 May 2023, Vienna, Austria.
Abstract:
Not only the growing demand for electricity combined with the limitations of renewable energy such as wind and solar but also excessive CO2 emission from fossil fuels make nuclear power more attractive as an important supply of energy. However, to develop a concrete nuclear regime, one of the aspects that should be considered is nuclear non-proliferation. The sensitive nuclear proliferation parts of nuclear fuel cycles such as used fuel reprocessing have been the subject of many studies over the years, Proliferation resistance assessment of re-enriched reprocessed uranium fuel discharged from a light water reactor is analyzed in the study presented in this paper. The proliferation resistance is analyzed for the multiple recycling of used nuclear fuel discharged from the water-cooled water-moderated energetic reactor (VVER). Proliferation resistance is analyzed by estimating the growth in the desired amount of even-numbered uranium and plutonium isotopes, especially U236 and Pu238 to make the used fuel less desirable for military purposes. plutonium isotopes especially U236 and Pu238 to make the spent fuel less desirable for military purposes. The Monte Carlo radiation transport code MCNP6.2 and Visual Editor 61 are used for VVER fuel assembly simulation. Uranium enrichment in fuel and fuel assembly geometry data were gathered for the fuel burnup simulation to study the multiple recycling of re-enriched reprocessed uranium obtained from used fuel discharged from a typical VVER. Following the fuel burnup, Matched Abundance Cascade Ratio (MARC), a Phyton code for re-enrichment of the reprocessed uranium is used for multiple recycling purposes. The multiple recycling analysis depicts a promising behavior in terms of proliferation resistance. The results show that RepU contains several uranium isotopes such as U236 which do not exist in natural uranium. U236 plays a vital role in generating Pu238, and multiple recycling enables Pu238 to increase and denature Pu because of its high spontaneous fission.