Disposition of weapons-grade plutonium in Westinghouse reactors

Due to the character of the original source materials and the nature of batch digitization, quality control issues may be present in this document. Please report any quality issues you encounter to digital@library.tamu.edu, referencing the URI of the item.Includes bibliographical references: p. 63-64.Issued also on microfiche from Lange Micrographics.We have studied the feasibility of using weapons-grade plutonium in the form of mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel in existing Westinghouse reactors. We have designed three transition cycles from an all LEU core to a partial MOX core. We found that four-loop Westinghouse reactors such as the Vogtle power plant are capable of handling up to 45 percent weapons-grade MOX loading without any modifications. We have also designed two kinds of weapons-grade MOX assemblies with three enrichments per assembly and four enrichments total. Wet annular burnable absorber (WABA) rods were used in all the feed and some burned MOX assemblies and some LEU feed assemblies. Integral fuel burnable absorber (IFBA) was used in the rest of the LEU feed assemblies. The average discharge burnup of MOX assemblies was over 47,000 MWD/MTM, which is more than enough to meet the "spent fuel standard." One unit is capable of consuming 0.462 MT of weapons-grade plutonium a year. Preliminary analyses showed that important reactor physics parameters for the three transitions cycles are comparable to those of LEU cores including boron levels, reactivity coefficients, peaking factors, and shutdown margins. Further transient analyses need to be performed