A novel method for transuranic fuel design

In this work a simple method for transuranic fuel lattice design is presented. The method is focused on finding the radial distribution of fuel rods having different transuranic contents to obtain a neutron multiplication factor (k) with a prescribed value and to minimize the rod power peaking factor PPF. The method is based on the factorization of the transuranic content of each fuel rod. The performance of the novel method was demonstrated with a fuel composed of uranium tails and transuranic isotopes coming from the recycling of spent fuel of a typical Boiling Water Reactor (BWR). The results show that the method converges to a minimum PPF and a prescribed k in an efficient and accurate form.