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The Simplest Flow sheet, Fig. 1.

10 is applicable to heavy water reactors fueled with natural uranium containing 0.711w/o 235U. Feed preparation for this type of reactor consists of purifying natural uranium concentrates, converting the uranium to UO2, and fabricating the UO2 into fuel elements. In this type of reactor, fission of 235U initially present in the feed and fission of plutonium formed from 238U will produce about 6800 MWd of heat per metric ton (1MT= 1000 Kg) of fuel before the fuel is so depleted in fissile material and so loaded with neutron absorbing fission products that the reactor is no longer critical. Since the heat of fission is 0.95 MW d/g, complete utilization of 1 M T of fuel would generate 950,000 MWd of heat.

In this type of reactor, thus fraction of natural uranium, about 0.7 percent, is converted to heat. (80 percent capacity factor) As the efficiency of conversion of heat to electricity in a heavy water nuclear power plant is about 30 percent, the rate at which a 1000.MW plant would have to be supplied natural uranium is

Or 143 MT of uranium per year In commercial transactions uranium concentrates are measured in short tons (2000 lb) of U3O8. In this Unit, the annual uranium consumption of this reactor would be

Assuming 99.5 percent uranium recovery in conversion

A fast reactor plant Fig 112 cooled with sodium or helium is expected to have a thermal efficiently of 40 percent. If it could covered 100 percent of its uranium feed to heat, a 1000 MWe plant would consume only

Of uranium. Because of its reprocessing losses and conversion of some uranium to non-fissile isotopes, the uranium consumption of a practical fast breeder system is expected be some what greater, perhaps 4kg/day, or 1.5 MT uranium/year. This is much less than for a thermal reactor.

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