Heterogeneous Cores for Implementation of Thorium-Based Fuels in Heavy Water Reactors
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
New reactor concepts to implement thorium-based fuel cycles have been explored to achieve maximum resource utilization. Pressure tube heavy water reactors (PT-HWRs) are highly advantageous for implementing thorium-based fuels because of their high neutron economy and online refueling capability. The use of heterogeneous seed/blanket core concepts in a PT-HWR where higher-fissile-content seed fuel bundles are physically separate from lower-fissile-content blanket bundles allows more flexibility and control in fuel management to maximize fissile utilization (FU) and conversion of fertile fuel. The lattice concept chosen was a 35-element bundle made with a homogeneous mixture of reactor-grade PuO2 (~67 wt% fissile) and ThO2, with a central zirconia rod to reduce coolant void reactivity. Several annular and checkerboard-type heterogeneous seed/blanket core concepts with plutonium-thorium–based fuels in a 700-MW(electric)–class PT-HWR were analyzed, using a once-through thorium cycle. Different combinations of seed and blanket fuel were tested to determine the impact on core-average burnup, FU, power distributions, and other performance parameters. WIMS-AECL Version 3.1 was used to perform lattice physics calculations using two-dimensional, 89-group integral neutron transport theory, while RFSP Version 3.5.1 was used to perform the core physics and fuel management calculations using three-dimensional two-group diffusion theory. Among the different core concepts investigated, there were cores where the FU was up to 30% higher than that achieved in a PT-HWR using natural uranium fuel bundles. There were cores where up to 67% of the Pu was consumed, cores where up to 43% of the energy was produced from thorium, and cores where up to 363 kg/year of 233U was produced in the discharged fuel.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it