Preliminary Analysis Of Fuel Cycle Of Fusion Driven Subcritical Spent Fuel Burner Using System Dynamics

To achieve sustainable development of the nuclear power, the issue of maximize resource utilization and minimize the total spent fuel accumulation must be solved. Re-cently, a fusion-driven subcritical system concept based on viable fusion and fission technologies, named Fusion Driven Subcritical Spent Fuel Burner (FDS-SFB), was pro-posed by Institute of Nuclear Energy Safety Technology·FDS Team. FDS-SFB is char-acterized by nuclear waste transmutation, breeding nuclear fuel and energy production and so on. Compared with other reactors, FDS-SFB have advantages of good safety and burning spent fuel.Based on literature researches and analysis of the existing nuclear fuel cycle study,the analysis of the symbiotic fuel cycle of FDS-SFB and Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) has been performed and the result was compared with once-through fuel cycle. In this paper, the major work including:Construction of the dynamic models of FDS-SFB fuel cycle and once-through fuel cycle using system dynamic software Vensim PLE have been performed. Every model could be used to calculate mass flow.The utilization of resources, the environment effects and the nuclear fuel cycle infrastructure requirements of these two fuel cycle scenarios have been compared. The analysis of sensitivity of resources requirements and the total spent fuel accumulation of symbiotic fuel cycle of FDS-SFB and PWR has also been performed.The levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of these fuel cycle scenarios have been calculated. The impact of uranium price, fuel fabrication price and reprocessing price on LCOE has also analysis. The analysis of sensitivity of LCOE has also been performed.Compared with once-through, the mass flow can be summarized as follows:(1)The amounts of natural uranium can be reduced by about36%.(2) The amounts of spent fuel can be reduced by about98%.(3) The amounts of TRU reduced by about93%.(4) The amounts of Pu reduced by about92%.(5) The amounts of MA reduced by about99%.These results show that FDS-SFB fuel cycle can save on the nature uranium re-source and reduce the spent fuel accumulation considerably. The mass flows sensitivity analysis shows that the selected parameters have little impact on mass flow results. The LCOE of the symbolic systems fuel cycle is34.43mills/kWh. It is1.27mills/kWh more than once-through fuel cycle. These preliminary results show that the economics of fuel cycle of FDS-SFB could be completive with once-through fuel cycle. With the uranium price increases or PWR spent fuel reprocessing price decreases, the LCOE of the once-through will be more than FDS-SFB fuel cycle. The sensitive of the LCOE of FDS-SFB fuel cycle results show that increases capacity factor, thermal efficiency and prolong re-actor lifetime will lead to the decrease of the LCOE and the thermal efficiency has the largest impact on LCOE.