Feasibility of Fueling PWRs with Fuel Discharged from Breed and Burn Reactors

The fuel discharged from Breed and Burn (B&B) reactors contains a relatively high content of fissile plutonium (∼10%). This study assesses the feasibility of reducing this fissile content while increasing the fuel utilization by loading the B&B discharged fuel, after reconditioning, into Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR). Two processes are examined for recycling the B&B reactor discharged fuel: the melt–refining process and the AIROX process. Both use processes that can remove a fraction of the fission products and cannot be used for actinide separation. It is found possible to load full PWR core with the reconditioned fuel and operate it to an additional burnup of up to 70,000 MWd/MTIHM (AIROX processed fuel) and 105,000 MWd/MTIHM (melt-refining treated fuel), while maintaining a negative coolant temperature reactivity coefficient. The burnup reactivity swing is significantly smaller than in conventional PWR cores. The B&B reactor fuel is highly proliferation resistant after being discharged from the PWR.