Design of a boiling water reactor core based on an integrated blanket–seed thorium–uranium concept

This paper is concerned with the design of a boiling water reactor (BWR) equilibrium core using thorium as a nuclear material in an integrated blanket–seed (BS) assembly. The integrated BS concept comes from the fact that the blanket and the seed rods are located in the same assembly, and are burned out in a once-through cycle. The idea behind the lattice design is to use the thorium conversion capability in a BWR spectrum, taking advantage of the 233U build-up. A core design was developed to achieve an equilibrium cycle of 365 effective full power days in a standard BWR with a reload of 104 fuel assemblies designed with an average 235U enrichment of 7.5 w/o in the seed sub-lattice. The main operating parameters, like power, linear heat generation rate and void distributions were obtained as well as the shutdown margin. It was observed that the analyzed parameters behave like those obtained in a standard BWR. The shutdown margin design criterion was fulfilled by addition of a burnable poison region in the fuel assembly.