Recent developments have been made in a novel fuel for pressurised heavy water reactors: high burnup oxide fuels composed of a mixture of thorium and high assay low enriched uranium. Several claims are made regarding the performance of such fuels in terms of economics, waste and non-proliferation, among others. This article analyses this class of fuel using an infinite lattice study in SERPENT. First, a set of fuel compositions in the thorium/uranium enrichment design space that satisfy the high burnup target is produced. Then, a representative thorium-based fuel is compared to a uranium-only fuel with the same discharge burnup, as well as current standard fuel, in the context of the various performance claims.
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Read et al. (2024) studied this question.
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