Study on long-life sodium cooled fast reactor concept with radial shuffling

This paper proposes a core shuffling design for a long-life sodium cooled fast reactor. Based on the breed and burn strategy and by means of radial shuffling, the reactor can sustain critical for a long time without refueling. In this design concept, one-through fuel cycle is adopted for nuclear non-proliferation, heterogeneous core is considered to flatten the local power peak and to enhance the in-core breeding, inward-convergent shuffling is employed to extend the core life. Preliminary calculations had proved that the shuffling scheme is feasible. The core life can reach over 38 years and the discharged breed assemblies can be used as the driver fuel in another reactor. The key parameters of the core are within the acceptable range in current fast reactor designs.