Annals of Nuclear Energy 36 (2009) 404–408

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Annals of Nuclear Energy

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Economy of uranium resources in a three-component reactor fleet

with mixed thorium/uranium fuel cycles
J.N. Wilson a,*, A. Bidaud b, N. Capellan a, R. Chambon b, S. David a, P. Guillemin b,
E. Ivanov c, A. Nuttin b, O. Meplan a
a
Institut de Physique Nucléaire, Orsay, France
b
LPSC, Grenoble, France
c
Kurchatov Institute, Moscow, Russia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The potential for minimizing uranium consumption by using a reactor fleet with three different compo-
Received 24 September 2008 nents and mixed thorium/uranium cycles has been investigated with a view to making nuclear power a
Received in revised form 28 November 2008 more sustainable and cleaner means of generating energy. Mass flows of fissile material have been cal-
Accepted 28 November 2008
culated from burnup simulations at the core-equivalent assembly level for each of the three components
Available online 30 January 2009
of the proposed reactor fleet: plutonium extracted from the spent fuel of a standard pressurized water
reactor (first component) is converted to 233U in an advanced boiling water reactor (second component)
to feed a deficit of multi-recycled 233U needed for the Th/233U fuel of the light/heavy water reactor (third
component) which has a high breeding ratio. Although the proposed fleet cannot breed its own fuel, we
show that it offers the possibility for substantial economy of uranium resources without the need to
resort to innovative (and costly) reactor designs. A very high fleet breeding ratio is achieved by using only
currently existing water-based reactor technology and we show that such three-component systems will
become economically competitive if the uranium price becomes sufficiently high (>300 $/kg). Another
major advantage of such systems is a corresponding substantial decrease in production of plutonium
and minor actinide waste.
Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Over the last 50 yr the pressurized water reactor (PWR) has be-
come ubiquitous due to its safe and reliable operating characteris-
tics derived from its water coolant/moderator, a well-understood,
non-corrosive liquid with a high heat capacity.
Unfortunately, the simple scaling up of current PWR technology
is not a sustainable strategy for nuclear power development and
expansion in the long term, and will furthermore massively com-
pound the problem of nuclear waste disposal. Currently there is
a renewed interest in the expansion of the role of nuclear power
for energy generation due to its lack of CO2 emissions (which con-
tribute to global warming), its economic viability, and its potential
for energy security and independence. However, as developing
countries rapidly increase their installed nuclear capacity and eas-
ily extractable uranium resources become depleted, the result will
likely be much higher uranium prices over the course of this cen-
tury and a legacy of large quantities of unburied nuclear waste.
While widespread use of fast breeder, closed-cycle reactor tech-
nology remains an ideal long term solution to the uranium re-
source and radioactive waste disposal problems, it is highly
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: wilson@ipno.in2p3.fr (J.N. Wilson).
unlikely that the global nuclear fleet will expand its collective
breeding ratio to greater than unity (current value 0.4) this cen-
tury, due to the huge capital costs and technological difficulties in-
volved in such fast breeder systems (e.g. corrosive liquid metal
coolants, and positive void coefficients) and the long time con-
stants involved in their development and large-scale deployment.
In this paper we show that a fleet of reactors with three different
components using mixed uranium/plutonium and thorium/ura-
nium cycles with only water-based reactor technology, offers great
scope for minimizing uranium consumption (up to 80% reduc-
tion) and will produce significantly lower quantities of plutonium
and minor actinide waste. This is achieved without having to resort
to large-scale deployment of expensive and technologically
demanding fast breeder reactors.
We envisage an intermediate stage in the global development of
nuclear power where reactor fleets consisting of three different
components optimize the neutron potential of water-based reactor
technology and thus minimize uranium resource consumption.
While such three-component systems will have breeding ratios
of less than unity, they are likely to be more economically compet-
itive than a fleet of either conventional PWR’s or a fleet of fast bree-
der reactors over a range of uranium prices between roughly
estimated to be between $300/kg and $1000/kg.

0306-4549/$ - see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.anucene.2008.11.037
 J.N. Wilson et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 36 (2009) 404–408
The introduction of the thorium cycle offers several advantages,
principally among them the production of up to 1000 times less
plutonium and minor actinide waste in a thermal spectrum reactor
and the possibility of high breeding ratios due to the low alpha
(capture/fission) ratio of the fissile 233U. However, the major draw-
back is that since 233U does not exist in significant quantities in
nature it must be first produced and its quantity sustained by run-
ning Th/233U breeder reactors (breeding ratios BR P 1.0). Unfortu-
nately, since the neutron balance is so delicate in such systems,
breeding can only be achieved through radically innovative de-
signs: either molten salt reactors, e.g. MSBR (Rosenthal et al.,
1970) with complicated online chemical reprocessing to remove
neutron poisons or reactors similar to the Shippingport (Shapiro
et al., 1977, Schick et al., 1987) design with geometrically inconve-
nient and awkward heterogeneous cores.
Our solution to this problem is to dispense with the need to de-
velop technologically innovative and economically unviable tho-
rium breeder reactors and instead run a reactor with a more
conventional design with Th/233U fuel in near breeder mode
(BR < 1.0). Achieving such breeding ratios is a feasible goal using
standard light or heavy water-based technologies. However, this
obviously necessitates the production of 233U elsewhere in the
reactor fleet to make up for the deficit of 233U incurred at each fuel
reprocessing.
2. Three-component reactor fleets
Fig. 1. shows a schematic diagram of the three-component reac-
tor fleet that we envisage operating at equilibrium. The first stage
is a conventional pressurized water reactor where the spent fuel is
reprocessed, the plutonium extracted and used for fabrication of
thoriated fuel for an advanced boiling water reactor (ABWR) which
operates as a Pu/233U converter in the second stage. The third stage
is a the 233U consumer stage, a heavy or light water reactor with a
high breeding ratio to be fueled with multi-recycled Th/233U fuel.
Since this system will have a breeding ratio of less than one, the
deficit of 233U incurred is filled by production from the previous
two stages.
The term ‘‘fleet” indicates the operation of sufficiently many
reactors (3) for single discrete reactor units to be unimportant.
The relative sizes of the fleet components will be determined by
the fissile mass available at each stage. In this study the main focus
is how the entire three-component system will function, which is
more important than the precise details of the components. The
choice of core/assembly designs and cycle lengths at each stage
can of course be varied. Of particular interest is the effect these
variations will have on the behaviour of the system operating at
equilibrium and how this will change the relative sizes of the com-
ponents. Optimization of the three-component fleet will also re-
quire an economic analysis in addition to that of burnup and
mass flow calculations and for this reason we have attempted to
construct a rudimentary economic model which is described in
Section 7.
Fig. 1. The basic schematic diagram of the 3-component reactor fleet. The fuel types
for each reactor component are shown in brackets. The possibility of plutonium
recycling at the second stage is shown with dashed lines.
405
The question of how it may be possible to arrive at the equilib-
rium will not be examined in this paper, although obviously the
provision of initial inventories of 233U for the third component
would need to be carefully planned in advance for the phased con-
struction of such a fleet.
The burnup calculations for the fleet components described
here were carried out with the evolution code MURE (Meplan
et al. 2005) based around the Monte-Carlo transport code MCNP
(Briesmeister 1997). MURE automatically performs consecutive
MCNP calculations to determine reaction rates and hence deduce
core material evolution over time at constant reactor power. The
MURE code is a precision research code and has been developed
jointly at the Institut de Physique Nucléaire d’Orsay and the Labo-
ratoire de Physique Subatomique et Cosmologie (LPSC) of Greno-
ble. It consists of over 25,000 lines of C++ and represents about
15 person-years of development.
The PWR and ABWR components in the fleet were modeled at
the level of a core-equivalent assembly situated in an infinite lat-
tice in the x–y plane, but with axial leakage of neutrons permitted.
The nuclear cross section data were taken from the ENDFB6 evalu-
ated cross section data base. Inventories of isotopes of interest
were extracted at the end of the fuel cycle.
From previous propagation of error analyses of the MURE code
for thermal spectrum reactors it has been determined that typical
errors in the inventories of various isotopes at the end of cycle are
typically the order of 2%. For certain nuclei, produced only by reac-
tions at an energy threshold (e.g. n,2n), the errors can be larger
(5%) since production of these nuclei are highly sensitive to
changes in the shape of the neutron spectrum.
In the next three sections the details of the burnup calculations
for each stage are given. The quantities of materials consumed and
produced at each stage are normalized for an initial 1 ton of natural
uranium metal. The material flows in a reactor fleet of arbitrary
size can then be calculated by scaling up from these values, and
could in principal be large enough to reside in more than one coun-
try. In all cases we define the breeding ratio in following way:
BR ¼ 1 þ ðMBOC  M EOC Þ=DM ð1Þ
where MBOC and MEOC are the masses of useful fissile material at the
beginning and end of the fuel cycle and DM is the mass of nuclei fis-
sioned during the fuel cycle.
3. First stage
For the first stage a typical 17  17 lattice of a pressurized water
reactor assembly was modelled using MURE. See Fig. 2.
The assembly consisted of 265 standard uranium dioxide (UOX)
fuel pins of 0.475 cm outer radius enriched to 4.2% with a zircalloy-
5 cladding of 0.57 mm thickness, with 24 guide tubes for insertion
Fig. 2. The PWR assembly geometry.
406 J.N. Wilson et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 36 (2009) 404–408

of control rods. The neutron multiplication factor (keff) of the Table 1

assembly was kept at unity for each step in the calculation by pre- Burnup simulation summary from the plutonium/233U conversion process.

cise control of the amount of the boron soluble neutron poison Isotope MBOC (g) MEOC (g) DM (g)
added to the water moderator. Around 60 MCNP calculation steps 232
U – 1.06 +1.06
at 3-week intervals were performed for a total burnup at the end of 233
U – 260 +260
234
cycle (EOC) of 38 GWd/t. The quantity of plutonium produced was U – 22.7 +22.7
235
1.350 kg per 116 kg of enriched fuel (or 1 ton of natural uranium). U – 5.50 +5.50
238
Pu 36.5 35.6 0.9
This value is typical for a PWR, and implies a breeding ratio of fis- 239
Pu 758 328 430
sile uranium to fissile plutonium of 0.49. The spent fuel was 240
Pu 353 285 68
allowed to cool for three years before reprocessing and fabrication 241
Pu 102 115 +13
242
of fuel for the second stage and therefore some fissile 241Pu Pu 100 94.2 5.8
Am + Cm + Np – 59.3 +59.3
(t1/2 = 14 yr) is lost as it decays to 241Am. 232
Th 14,000 13,593 407
FP – 598 +598

4. Second stage

The second stage requires conversion of the plutonium from the
spent PWR fuel to 233U for the third stage by fabricating thorium/
plutonium (Th/Pu) mixed oxide fuel. To obtain the highest conver-
sion efficiencies requires a neutron spectrum which is epi-thermal
(or fast) to maximize neutron captures on the thorium and mini-
mize captures on the plutonium isotopes which have large capture
resonances at thermal energies. Therefore the low moderation ra-
tios and hard neutron spectra available in an advanced boiling
water reactor ABWR or supercritical water reactor (SCWR) are
needed (Buongiorno and MacDonald, 2003). The reactor assembly
we chose to model was from the FLWR, a Japanese ABWR concept
(Okubo et al., 2005, Uchiwicka et al., 2005). The FLWR concept is
designed for use with U/Pu MOX fuels for the purpose of Pu
multi-recycling. However, in our calculations we simulated the
same design but with Th/Pu MOX fuels. See Fig. 3.
The 1356 MWe core of this reactor concept consists of 900
assemblies each containing 217 fuel pins, with a side length of
22 cm and height of 1.5 m. The fuel rod radius and pitch are
0.560 cm and 1.5 cm respectively and give a volumic ratio of mod-
erator to heavy metal (HM) of 0.98. The thermal-hydraulics code
COBRA-en was used to simulate the flow and change in phase of
the water as it passed along the ABWR column. Moderator temper-
ature and density profiles were obtained for an inlet temperature of
545 °K and a mass flow of 615 kg m2 s1 giving a void fraction of
0.4. These distributions were then used in MURE/MCNP neutronics
calculations by cutting each assembly into 10 axial zones, each with
its unique temperature and density. Initial burnup calculations
involving U/Pu MOX fuel at 9% molar enrichment resulted in a Pu
breeding ratio of 0.85, identical to the value obtained in (Okubo
et al., 2005). The details of the Pu/233U conversion when loaded
with Th/Pu fuel at an enrichment of 10% Pu are given in Table 1.
To examine whether there are any safety problems with the Th/
Pu fuel, feedback coefficients were calculated. The fuel Doppler
feedback coefficient for Th/Pu(10%) was determined to be
Dq = 4.6  105 K1 as compared to Dq = 2.9  105 K1 for
U/Pu(9%) fuel. For the moderator void coefficients values have been
calculated for a total loss of coolant and are Dq = 0.34 for Th/
Pu(10%) fuel and Dq = 0.13 for the U/Pu(9%) fuel, indicating that
safety feedback effects for the innovative Th/Pu fuel are stronger
than those of the U/Pu fuel for which the FLWR was designed.
5. Third stage
The third stage of the proposed three-component system is a
water-based reactor which uses Th/233U fuel intended for multi-
recycling and operates with a high breeding ratio. Breeding is very
difficult to achieve for a power reactor with a solid fuel and a
water-based coolant. See Fig. 4.
However, it has been known from work in the 1970s that near-
breeding of 233U in CANDU reactors is possible (Critoph et al.,
1976; Milgram 1982). Therefore, for the third stage we have exam-
ined two possibilities: The first is Th/233U fuel in a CANDU-6 reac-
tor and the second is Th/233U fuel in a homogeneous PWR assembly
geometry identical to that used in the first component of the fleet.
The PWR will have lower breeding ratios due to captures on the
light water that do not occur in the D2O moderated CANDU, but
will allow much longer cycle lengths so may be economically com-
petitive with the CANDU for the final stage since fuel reprocessing
is currently very expensive (see Section 7). The breeding ratios for
both sets of burnup calculations are shown in Fig. 5. Since the CAN-
DU reactor recharges its fuel online, the methodology described by
(Chambon et al., 2007) is adopted for the MURE simulations, where
the Canadian code DONJON (Varin et al., 2003) is used in tandem to
simulate realistic core fuel management and evaluate dwell times
and leakages for the fuel bundle in the core.
For the PWR, it will be possible to achieve higher conversion ra-
tios if heterogeneous seed-blanket assembly configurations are
used. This is a topic for further investigation.

Fig. 3. The geometry of the FLWR assembly. Fig. 4. Geometry of the CANDU-6 37-rod bundle.
 J.N. Wilson et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 36 (2009) 404–408
Fig. 5. Calculated breeding ratios as a function of fuel burnup for the third
component of the reactor fleet. The 233U enrichment for each data point is written
above it.
From a safety point of view, it is anticipated that delayed neu-
tron fractions for Th/233U fuels will be lower than for conventional
fuels but will be similar to those of U/Pu MOX fuels already in use
today (0.3%) so should not present major safety problems.
Finally, it should be noted that the uranium in the third stage is
to be multi-recycled there will be slight changes in the uranium
isotopic vector with each cycle. The 234U content will likely in-
crease to an equilibrium value, which could in principle degrade
the breeding ratio of the third component. The change in perfor-
mance of the three-component fleet past the first 233U recycle is
a subject for future investigation.
6. Mass flow
The mass flow for 1 ton of natural uranium (heavy metal) in its
journey through a three-component reactor fleet can be seen in
Fig. 5.
The amount of fissile material available at each stage was calcu-
lated for burnups of 38 GWd/t (PWR), 45 GWd/t (BWR) and
22 GWd/t (CANDU). The energy liberated at each stage determines
the relative size of each component in the fleet, in this case 38%
PWR, 5% BWR and 57% CANDU. The energy liberated at each stage
is dependent on the breeding ratios, and is particularly sensitive for
the breeding ratio of the third component, which is 0.96 for the
case shown in Fig. 6. An estimate of the cost for the reprocessing
of spent fuel and fabrication of new fuel between the stages is gi-
ven, with the initial $200 k per ton of uranium metal derived from
Fig. 6. Mass flow of 1 ton of natural uranium metal through the 3-component fleet.
The energy liberated by each component is shown above the dashed arrows along
with its fraction in the fleet.
407
the spot price at the time of writing (January 2008) of $170/kg of
U2O3. However, the spot market has recently been extremely vola-
tile, peaking at $308/kg (June 2007), but subsequently falling back
to just under $100 (October 2008). Details of the other price
assumptions made to obtain these figures are given in the next
section.
The results show that the total amount of energy squeezed from
1 ton of enriched uranium is therefore increased by a factor of 3,
from 38 GWd (for the PWR in the first stage operating in open cy-
cle) to 97 GWd if stages 2 and 3 are added, and this gives only a
marginal increase in the quantity of plutonium and minor actinide
waste produced.
7. Economic analysis
Once the mass flows and energy liberated at each stage of the
three-component system have been determined it is possible to
construct a rudimentary economic model. The goal is to give a
rough estimate of the cost of the fuel cycle in cents per kwh of elec-
tricity as a function of the uranium price.
A summary of the results for the CANDU (Th/233U) and PWR
(Th/233U) at the longest and shortest burnups can be seen in
Fig. 7. All reactor fleets have a fuel cycle cost which is linearly
dependent on the uranium price and the slope of the line repre-
sents the efficiency with which uranium resources are used. Since
reprocessing is so expensive, the longest burnups are always fa-
voured. The results show that although PWR’s using Th/233U fuel
have much lower breeding ratios, the longer burnups available
produce break-even prices ($320) similar to fleets involving CAN-
DU reactors. Clearly there is much scope for further optimizing the
fleet for example by improving the breeding ratio of the third com-
ponent by using heterogeneous seed-blanket assemblies or intro-
ducing multi-recycling of plutonium in the second stage which
could decrease uranium consumption by roughly another factor
of two (at increased cost).
The price assumptions used in the model are as follows: $105/
kg for enrichment of natural uranium, $700/kg for PWR and
$1400/kg for ABWR and CANDU spent fuel reprocessing costs,
$250/kg for PWR and $1100/kg for ABWR and CANDU fuel fabrica-
tion costs. The higher prices for reprocessing and fuel fabrication
attributed to the ABWR and CANDU components are due to the ex-
tra shielding and remote handling that reprocessing and fabrica-
tion of the fuels for these reactors. This is mainly due to the high
3
0.99
Fuel cycle cost (cents/kwh)
2 0.89
0.96
PWR (UOX) open
1 0.60 CANDU (21 GWd
CANDU (12 GWd
PWR (41 GWd/t)
PWR (6 GWd/t)
0
0 100 200 300 400 500 60
U2O3 price ($)
Fig. 7. The cost of the fuel cycle versus the natural uranium price for fleets with
CANDU and PWR as the 3rd 233U consumer component (green dotted lines and blue
dashed lines) compared to a standard open cycle PWR (UOX) fleet with 38 Gwd/t
burnup (black line).. Breeding ratios of the 3rd component are written above each
line (For interpretation of the references in colour in this figure legend, the reader is
referred to the web version of this article.)
408 J.N. Wilson et al. / Annals of Nuclear Energy 36 (2009) 404–408
energy gammas at the end of the decay chain of 232U, which will be
present in small quantities in the third and second stage due to
n,2n reactions on the 233U. Although this necessitates more expen-
sive reprocessing, this does provide the major advantage that pro-
liferation resistance will be greatly increased due to the severe
difficulty of manipulating the 233U for construction of a nuclear
weapon.
8. Conclusion
Three-component reactor fleets using mixed uranium and tho-
rium cycles offer the possibility of a more sustainable nuclear
power, using fewer natural resources and producing less waste.
Moreover, these systems could be developed rapidly due to the fact
that the PWR’s and in some cases BWR’s already exist in current
reactor fleets. The proposed technology, although requiring some
innovations in fuel reprocessing, fuel fabrication and reactor safety,
could be deployed gradually and within a relatively short time-
scales of 20–30 years. It would also not hinder the future develop-
ment/deployment of fast breeder reactors if the need for such a
transition were to arrive. In addition, if collaboration between
countries with civil nuclear power programs was increased and
restrictions on the transport of fissile materials between countries
lifted, then a prototype three-component system may already exist
in Asia: spent fuel from China’s PWR’s could be used to produce
233
U in Japan’s BWR’s, the reprocessed fuel being used to provide
Th/233U for multi-recycling in South Korea’s CANDU reactors. At
no stage in the fuel cycle of the three-component system will fuel
be fabricated with a fissile content of greater than 6%, so the pro-
posed development is relatively proliferation resistant and is
consistent with the aims of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership
(GNEP, 2007).
To conclude, we suggest that the potential for the expansion of
the role of nuclear power by development of three-component
fleets based on improvements of existing water-based reactor
technology is both feasible and realistic. The implementation of
such systems is not dependent on huge leaps in technological pro-
gress and/or the successful construction/demonstration of radi-
cally innovative designs and could lead to a significant economy
of uranium resources and large reduction in volumes of radioactive
waste produced.
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