Performance Evaluation of Different Types of Nuclear Fuels Loaded in Fast Reactor Core for A Long Time Operation

By using a typical fast reactor core model formed by hexagonal lattice cell,this paper studied the performance of different types of nuclear fuels,which are loaded respectively as fuel in this fast reactor core model for a long time operation,and analyzed the spent fuel compositions of different fuel types at EOL.The results indicated that,in the case of same lattice cell and similar initial reactivity,the burnup reactivity loss of metallic fuel is the smallest,followed by nitride fuel,carbide fuel and finally oxide fuel,while within same chemical form,fuels driven by Pu provide smaller reactivity loss compared to fuels driven by ²³⁵U.Analysis of spent fuel composition shows that metallic fuel also exhibits smallest TRUs mass (averaged by initial fuel mass) of spent fuel,and then followed by oxide fuel,nitride fuel and carbide fuel,while at the same time,compared to fuels driven by ²³⁵U,Pu based fuels were found to discharge more TRUs mass because of the increase of initial Pu loading mass,and thus lower percent of fissile materials in spent fuel.In terms of neutronics UZr fuel is an ideal fuel for long life fast reactor core.