Two Near-Term Alternatives for Improved Nuclear Fuel Utilization

A comparison has been made between a modest increase in fuel discharge burnup and repetitive end-of-cycle coastdowns as two near-term alternatives that may be used to improve utilization of resources for a pressurized water reactor on the once-through cycle. Four cases have been considered. The cases include two different burnup levels—present technology of 33 000 MWd/MTU and a 3000 MWd/MTU increase in design burnup to 36 000 MWd/MTU. At each burnup value a fuel cycle without coastdown and one with coastdown every cycle have been evaluated. For each of the four cases, computations have been made of uranium requirements, separative work requirements, and m/kWh(electric) costs. The analyses show that the improvements in resource utilization with end-of-cycle coastdown are modest (<2%). There may be little or no economic benefits. The gains from increased discharge burnup are primarily a reduced fuel cycle cost. Since individual utilities may not see benefits in uranium or separative work savings per se that do not also include dollar savings, implementation of coastdown on a nationwide basis may be difficult.