Design and performance assessment of the ALFRED burner variation

In the framework of the Horizon 2020 project PuMMA (Plutonium Management for More Agility), a burner version of ALFRED (Advanced Lead Fast Reactor European Demonstrator) was designed to provide a reference case scenario of a plutonium burner Generation IV LFR (Lead Fast Reactor). The design was developed to increase the sustainability and performance of the reactor, using MOX (Mixed Oxide) fuel with high plutonium content, up to 40 wt.%. The core modifications were implemented aiming at maximizing the plutonium burning performance while preserving the robustness and safety of the original design and allowing complete integration with the same primary system arrangement. The new core’s neutronics were modeled with two different codes (ERANOS and SERPENT 2), whose results were applied as inputs for the thermal-hydraulic characterizations of a hot single channel in RELAP5. Finally, the neutronics and thermal-hydraulics outputs were employed as input to assess the ALFRED-Burner pin normal operating conditions with the fuel performance code TRANSURANUS. The analysis of the best-estimate reference scenario was followed by a sensitivity analysis to determine which fuel and cladding property parameters had the highest impact on pin performance results. The verifications performed so far confirm the promising safety features of the lead-cooled fast reactor and its performance with high plutonium content MOX fuel. However, the outcome of the analysis also highlights the potential for improvements in the fuel performance code. Such developments would allow enhanced performance and safety assessments.