Deployment Scenario of Heavy Water Cooled Thorium Breeder Reactor

Deployment scenario of heavy water cooled thorium breeder reactor has been studied. We have assumed to use plutonium and thorium oxide fuel in water cooled reactor to produce U-233 which will be used in thorium breeder reactor. The objective is to analysis the potential of water cooled Th-Pu reactor for replacing all of current LWRs especially in Japan. In this paper, the standard Pressurize Water Reactor (PWR) has been designed to produce 3423 MWt; (i) Th-Pu PWR, (ii) Th-Pu HWR (MFR=1.0) and (iii) Th-Pu HWR (MFR= 1.2). The properties and performance of the core were investigated by using cell and core calculation code. Th-Pu PWR or HWR produces 233U to introduce thorium breeder reactor. The result showed that to replace all (60GWe) LWR by thorium breeder reactor within a period of one century, Th-Pu oxide fueled PWR has insufficient capability to produce necessary amount of 233U and Th-Pu oxide fueled HWR has almost enough potential to produce 233U but shows positive void reactivity coefficient.