A VISION of Advanced Nuclear System Cost Uncertainty

VISION (VerifIable fuel cycle SImulatiON) is the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative’s nuclear fuel cycle systems code designed to simulate the U.S. commercial reactor fleet. The code is a dynamic stock and flow model that tracks key material mass flows at the elemental and isotopic levels through the entire nuclear fuel cycle. VISION.ECON is a submodel of VISION that was developed to estimate the costs of electricity. The sub-model uses the mass flows generated by VISION for each of the fuel cycle functions and calculates costs based on the Department of Energy Advanced Fuel Cycle Cost Basis report. This paper provides an evaluation of the cost uncertainty effects attributable to fuel cycle system parameters and scheduling variations. A scenario utilizing a single light-water reactor (LWR) using uranium oxide fuel is examined to ascertain the effects of simple parameter changes. The four variable parameters are burnup, thermal efficiency, capacity factor, and reactor construction time. The effect variables are the total cost of electricity (TCOE) and the fuel cycle costs (FCC). Strategies for future analysis are also discussed. Future work consists of extending the analysis to more complex scenarios, including LWRs using mixed oxide fuel and fast recycling reactors using transuranic fuel.

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Overview of the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Waste Forms Development

Volume 7: Decontamination and Decommissioning, Radiation Protection, and Waste Management; Mitigation Strategies for Beyond Design Basis Events ◽

10.1115/icone26-81017 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Kimberly Gray ◽

John Vienna ◽

Patricia Paviet

Keyword(s):

Nuclear Fuel ◽

Fuel Cycle ◽

Nuclear Fuel Cycle ◽

The United States ◽

Department Of Energy ◽

High Level Waste ◽

Fuel Cycles ◽

Waste Forms ◽

The U.S

In order to maintain the U.S. domestic nuclear capability, its scientific technical leadership, and to keep our options open for closing the nuclear fuel cycle, the Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE) invests in various R&D programs to identify and resolve technical challenges related to the sustainability of the nuclear fuel cycle. Sustainable fuel cycles are those that improve uranium resource utilization, maximize energy generation, minimize waste generation, improve safety and limit proliferation risk. DOE-NE chartered a Study on the evaluation and screening of nuclear fuel cycle options, to provide information about the potential benefits and challenges of nuclear fuel cycle options and to identify a relatively small number of promising fuel cycle options with the potential for achieving substantial improvements compared to the current nuclear fuel cycle in the United States. The identification of these promising fuel cycles helps in focusing and strengthening the U.S. R&D investment needed to support the set of promising fuel cycle system options and nuclear material management approaches. DOE-NE is developing and evaluating advanced technologies for the immobilization of waste issued from aqueous and electrochemical recycling activities including off-gas treatment and advanced fuel fabrication. The long-term scope of waste form development and performance activities includes not only the development, demonstration, and technical maturation of advanced waste management concepts but also the development and parameterization of defensible models to predict the long-term performance of waste forms in geologic disposal. Along with the finding of the Evaluation and Screening Study will be presented the major research efforts that are underway for the development and demonstration of waste forms and processes including glass ceramic for high-level waste raffinate, alloy waste forms and glass ceramics composites for HLW from the electrochemical processing of fast reactor fuels, and high durability waste forms for radioiodine.

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Novel approaches for the in situ study of the sintering of nuclear oxide fuel materials and their surrogates

Radiochimica Acta ◽

10.1515/ract-2016-2659 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 105 (11) ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Nicolas Clavier ◽

Galy Ingrid Nkou Bouala ◽

Jacques Léchelle ◽

Julien Martinez ◽

Nicolas Dacheux ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Nuclear Fuel ◽

Fuel Cycle ◽

Ceramic Materials ◽

Nuclear Fuel Cycle ◽

Oxide Fuel ◽

Primary Interest ◽

In Situ Study ◽

Key Points ◽

Novel Approaches

AbstractSintering is one of the key-points of the processing of ceramic materials. It is then of primary interest for the nuclear fuel cycle, in which it constitutes an important step in the fabrication of either UO

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Physical model of the nuclear fuel cycle simulation code SITON

Annals of Nuclear Energy ◽

10.1016/j.anucene.2016.10.001 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 99 ◽

pp. 471-483 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Á. Brolly ◽

M. Halász ◽

M. Szieberth ◽

L. Nagy ◽

S. Fehér

Keyword(s):

Physical Model ◽

Nuclear Fuel ◽

Fuel Cycle ◽

Nuclear Fuel Cycle ◽

Simulation Code ◽

Cycle Simulation

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Analysis of Environmental Friendliness of Advanced Nuclear Fuel Cycle in Korea

9th ASME International Conference on Radioactive Waste Management and Environmental Remediation: Volumes 1, 2, and 3 ◽

10.1115/icem2003-4576 ◽

2003 ◽

Author(s):

Yong Han Kim ◽

Kun Jai Lee ◽

Won Zin Oh

Keyword(s):

Waste Management ◽

Nuclear Fuel ◽

Fuel Cycle ◽

Clean Energy ◽

Nuclear Fuel Cycle ◽

Utilization Efficiency ◽

High Level Waste ◽

Environmental Friendliness ◽

Fuel Cycles ◽

Advanced Fuel

In order to show that the nuclear energy could be a clean energy, radioactive waste management, especially high level waste has to be successfully managed and also accepted by the public. As discussed, progressed and focused at GEN IV international project, reduction of long lived actinide source term and corresponding toxicity through transmutation process has been recognized as one possible solution to the problem and draw lots of attention these days and active R&D efforts are pursued and progressed worldwidely. Especially, much of interest has been initiated to the accelerator driven system (ADS) for the transmutation of the actinide as a subcritical reactors or combination to fast reactor (FR) to generate energy and transmute the HLW simultaneously in a cleaner and safer ways. This study compare and clarifies the roles and merits of the FR and ADS, which would be expected to be introduced into the future Korean nuclear fuel cycle partly, in view of environmental friendliness especially with the existing nuclear fuel cycle dominated by PWR in Korea. After selecting the most plausible and appropriate reactor strategy scenario, the mass flow balance of active radionuclides from ore to waste for several cases of advanced nuclear fuel cycle (where “advanced nuclear fuel cycle” means the nuclear fuel cycle with FR or ADS) is analyzed by computer code. Advanced nuclear fuel cycle with only FR or ADS, and with both FR and ADS were considered for this analysis. A spread sheet type of code, that compute material flow and some environmental friendliness indices chronologically, was developed and analyzed for the calculation. Some indices for the environmental friendliness (i.e. amount of actinide nuclides, radioactivity and radiotoxicity of them, and uranium resource requirement) for several types of advanced nuclear fuel cycles are analyzed comparing with those of once-through fuel cycle. According to the final results, it confirmed quantitatively that the advanced fuel cycle with FRs and ADSs would be one of the possible alternatives to relieve the burden of HLW waste management because those fuel cycle options might reduce the generation of the transuranic radionuclides by tens to hundreds times less compared to that of once-through fuel cycle. Especially advanced nuclear system combined with FR and ADS shows much better effects compared to not combined system. Resource utilization efficiency is also much upgraded high by the introduction of advanced fuel cycles with a significant high share of fast reactors (i.e. only a half amount of uranium can be consumed in case of introduction of breakeven type FR compared to once-through fuel cycle case.)

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NMB4.0: development of integrated nuclear fuel cycle simulator from the front to back-end

EPJ Nuclear Sciences & Technologies ◽

10.1051/epjn/2021019 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 7 ◽

pp. 19

Author(s):

Tomohiro Okamura ◽

Ryota Katano ◽

Akito Oizumi ◽

Kenji Nishihara ◽

Masahiko Nakase ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Nuclear Fuel ◽

Fuel Cycle ◽

Material Balance ◽

Nuclear Fuel Cycle ◽

Nuclear Material ◽

Energy Utilization ◽

Cycle Simulation ◽

Computational Performance ◽

Balance Analysis ◽

Technical Features

Nuclear Material Balance code version 4.0 (NMB4.0) has been developed through collaborative R&D between TokyoTech&JAEA. Conventional nuclear fuel cycle simulation codes mainly analyze actinides and are specialized for front-end mass balance analysis. However, quantitative back-end simulation has recently become necessary for considering R&D strategies and sustainable nuclear energy utilization. Therefore, NMB4.0 was developed to realize the integrated nuclear fuel cycle simulation from front- to back-end. There are three technical features in NMB4.0: 179 nuclides are tracked, more than any other code, throughout the nuclear fuel cycle; the Okamura explicit method is implemented, which contributes to reducing the numerical cost while maintaining the accuracy of depletion calculations on nuclides with a shorter half-life; and flexibility of back-end simulation is achieved. The main objective of this paper is to show the newly developed functions, made for integrated back-end simulation, and verify NMB4.0 through a benchmark study to show the computational performance.

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Optimization models of a two-component nuclear energy system with thermal and fast reactors in a closed nuclear fuel cycle

Nuclear Energy and Technology ◽

10.3897/nucet.5.33981 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 5 (1) ◽

pp. 39-45 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Andrey A. Andrianov ◽

Ilya S. Kuptsov ◽

Tatyana A. Osipova ◽

Olga N. Andrianova ◽

Tatyana V. Utyanskaya

Keyword(s):

Nuclear Fuel ◽

Nuclear Energy ◽

Fuel Cycle ◽

Energy System ◽

Nuclear Fuel Cycle ◽

Optimization Models ◽

Oxide Fuel ◽

Fast Reactors ◽

Closed Nuclear Fuel Cycle ◽

Two Component

The article presents a description and some illustrative results of the application of two optimization models for a two-component nuclear energy system consisting of thermal and fast reactors in a closed nuclear fuel cycle. These models correspond to two possible options of developing Russian nuclear energy system, which are discussed in the expert community: (1) thermal and fast reactors utilizing uranium and mixed oxide fuel, (2) thermal reactors utilizing uranium oxide fuel and fast reactors utilizing mixed nitride uranium-plutonium fuel. The optimization models elaborated using the IAEA MESSAGE energy planning tool make it possible not only to optimize the nuclear energy system structure according to the economic criterion, taking into account resource and infrastructural constraints, but also to be used as a basis for developing multi-objective, stochastic and robust optimization models of a two-component nuclear energy system. These models were elaborated in full compliance with the recommendations of the IAEA’s PESS and INPRO sections, regarding the specification of nuclear energy systems in MESSAGE. The study is based on publications of experts from NRC “Kurchatov Institute”, JSC “SSC RF-IPPE”, ITCP “Proryv”, JSC “NIKIET”. The presented results demonstrate the characteristic structural features of a two-component nuclear energy system for conservative assumptions in order to illustrate the capabilities of the developed optimization models. Consideration is also given to the economic feasibility of a technologically diversified nuclear energy structure providing the possibility of forming on its base a robust system in the future. It has been demonstrated that given the current uncertainties in the costs of nuclear fuel cycle services and reactor technologies, it is impossible at the moment to make a reasonable conclusion regarding the greatest attractiveness of a particular option in terms of the economic performance.

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Repository performance assessment and advanced fuel cycle models for input to decision making of options for nuclear waste and resource management

MRS Proceedings ◽

10.1557/proc-932-102.1 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 932 ◽

Author(s):

J.S. Small ◽

C.H. Zimmerman ◽

D.R. Parker ◽

C. Robbins ◽

A.E. Bond ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Nuclear Fuel ◽

Fuel Cycle ◽

Computer Software ◽

Nuclear Fuel Cycle ◽

Dose Assessment ◽

High Level Waste ◽

Process Step ◽

Advanced Fuel ◽

High Level ◽

Physical And Chemical

ABSTRACTA methodology and computer software is described which can be used to track the inventory of radionuclides as they are affected by various nuclear, physical and chemical processes during reactor, storage, effluent and disposal phases of the nuclear fuel cycle. Such a model is required to provide an assessment of economic, environmental and societal performance indicators which underpin decisions regarding options for the use and management and nuclear materials. An example generic deep repository model is described which can be used to provide an indicator of environmental performance of vitrified high level waste and UO2 and mixed oxide (MOX) spent fuels. The assessment models highlight the significance of the I-129 fission product which necessitates the use of appropriate dose assessment models to be considered for each process step of the nuclear fuel cycle in order that a complete environmental assessment of process options can be determined.

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