Development of the General Design of the Industrial Energy Complex with CNFC

A. Zherebtsov, Yu. Mochalov, A. Shadrin, Yu. Zaikov, M. Gorbachev (Institution “Innovation and Technology Center for PRORYV”, Moscow), K. Sokolov (Joint Stock Company “CPTI”, Moscow), V. Kisly, D. Goncharov (SOSNY R&D Company, Dimitrovgrad)

 Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 1475 (2020)

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The article discusses the technological and project aspects of the closure of the nuclear fuel cycle of fast neutron reactors on the example of the conceptual design of the industrial power complex. The advantages of using combined SNF processing technology are noted. The advantages of creating a universal production of nuclear fuel for fast neutron reactors of different configurations are given. Hypothetical sites for the production of closed nuclear fuel cycle are considered.

Introduction

The closure of nuclear fuel cycle for fast neutron reactors is one of the development priorities for the nuclear power industry in the world. The key requirement to close the nuclear fuel cycle is to provide integrated safety, competitiveness and sustainability, which are a must for a full-scale development of nuclear power industry.

A representative comparison of the existing competitive options for process solutions must be performed to choose the method of technological implementation of such an integrated approach to create a closed nuclear fuel cycle. The selection is additionally complicated by the fact that the existing process solutions are at a different level of elaboration, for example, the hydrometallurgical technology based on the Purex process is an industrial technology of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel. Also, the world has accumulated considerable experience in the development of pyrochemical technologies for reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel in salt melts. Nevertheless, the existing limitations of hydrometallurgical and pyrochemical technologies have become the reason for developing a combined (pyro-hydrometallurgical) technology, which allows to obtain a synergistic effect from using the advantages of pyrochemical and hydrometallurgical technologies, thus providing for processing of spent nuclear fuel with a short residence time and obtaining the target product with high fission products (FP) purification rate.

The same applies to existing technologies for the production of uranium-plutonium fuel, which impose requirements on the parameters of recycled products of spent nuclear fuel reprocessing.

Since competitiveness is one of the key criteria for choosing the method of the nuclear fuel cycle closure, the site to locate the production facilities and the method of implementation (on-site stationary or centralized) of the nuclear fuel cycle also require justification.

This paper considers using the concept design of closed nuclear fuel cycle (CNFC) production sites as a tool for performing multi-criteria analysis.