Development of security and safety fuel for Pu-burner HTGR, 18; Fuel design and core design

Goto, Minoru  ; Inaba, Yoshitomo  ; Ueta, Shohei   ; Fukaya, Yuji   ; Tachibana, Yukio ; Okamoto, Koji*

In addition to the high nuclear proliferation resistance, in order to enhance safety at high burn-up, The Univ. of Tokyo, JAEA, Fuji Electric. and NFI propose in a framework of contracted study to introduce a PuO-YSZ fuel kernel with ZrC coating to the plutonium burner HTGR. In this study, JAEA conducts design of the coated fuel particle and of the reactor core to confirm the feasibility of the plutonium burner HTGR. This paper describes the investigation result of the ZrC layer thickness that enables to absorb all of the free-oxygen emitted from the fuel kernel and the calculation results of nuclear characteristics of the reactor core and fuel temperature during the normal operation condition.