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This article investigates alternate fuel options for Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs), focusing on thorium use to address safety, efficiency, and waste issues associated with standard UO 2 fuel. Challenges in thorium utilization, such as the lack of a fissile isotope, are handled using approaches such as homogeneous mixtures and heterogeneous arrangements, promoting the exploration of (Th- 233 U- 235 U)O 2 fuel in various assembly configurations. According to recent research, the annular dual-cooled assembly design has promising results in terms of fuel efficiency and safety while lowering the requirement for higher fissile enrichment levels. Studies additionally demonstrate that annular dual-cooled duplex fuel configurations can produce higher discharge burnup and lower power peaking factors than traditional UO 2 fuel. The purpose of this work is to analyze and compare the performance of (Th- 233 U- 235 U)O 2 fuel in various configurations against conventional UO 2 fuel, focusing on key characteristics such as reactivity change, criticality, discharge burnups, and reactivity feedback coefficients.
Banni et al. (Fri,) studied this question.