Comparative study of actinide and fission product inventory of HEU and potential LEU fuels for MNSRs

A comparative study of fuel burnup and buildup of actinides and fission products for potential LEU fuels (UO2 and U–9Mo) with existing HEU fuel (UAl4–Al, 90% enriched) for a typical Miniature Neutron Source Reactor (MNSR) has been carried-out using the WIMSD4 computer program. For the complete burnup, the UAl4–Al, UO2 and U–9Mo based systems show a total consumption of 6.89, 6.83 and 6.88 g of 235U, respectively. Relative to 0.042 g 239Pu produced in case of UAl4–Al HEU core, UO2 and U–9Mo based cores have been found to yield 0.793 and 0.799 g, respectively, indicating much larger values of conversion ratios and correspondingly high values of fuel utilization factor. The end-of-cycle activity of the HEU core has been found 2284 Ci which agrees well with value found by Khattab where as for UO2 based and U–9Mo based LEU cores show 1.8 and 4.8% increase with values 2326 and 2394 Ci, respectively.