Reactor with metallic fuel and lead-208 coolant

Abstract

The paper considers the concept of a fast lead cooled 25MW reactor for a variety of applications, including incineration of minor actinides, production of medical radioisotopes, testing of radiation-damaged nuclear technology materials, etc. A specific feature of the proposed reactor is rather a high neutron flux of 2.6·1015 n/(cm2·s) at the core center, high average neutron energy of 0.95 MeV at the core center, and a large fraction (40%) of hard neutrons (En > 0.8 MeV). The extremely high estimated reactor parameters are achieved thanks to the small core dimensions (DxH ≈ 0.50×0.42 m2), innovative metallic fuel of the Pu-Am-Np-Zr alloy, and the 208Pb enriched lead coolant. A relatively high probability of 241Am fission (about 50%) is achieved in the reactor core’s hard spectrum, this making it possible to incinerate up to 4 kg of 241Am during one reactor campaign of 1000 effective days.