Investigation on Innovative Water Reactor for Flexible Fuel Cycle (FLWR), 2; Recycle characteristics

Okubo, Tsutomu; Uchikawa, Sadao; Kugo, Teruhiko ; Akie, Hiroshi  ; Takeda, Renzo*

In order to ensure sustainable energy supply in the future based on the commercialized LWR technologies, a concept of Innovative Water Reactor for Flexible Fuel Cycle (FLWR) has been investigated in JAERI. Results on the FLWR recycling characteristics under possible various reprocessing schemes are presented in the present paper. The results show the recycling is possible a few times at most as long as the fissile Pu content stays over 60%, even in the high conversion type core with the conversion ratio around 0.9, under the simplified PUREX reprocessing, with relatively high average decontamination factor. For breeding core, the results have indicated that even under the reprocessing with relatively low DFs and with whole MA, the recycling is also feasible, suggesting all MAs from the core can be possibly recycled itself, although the core performances are a little degraded depending on MA and FP contents.