Mass Estimates of Very Small Reactor Cores Fueled by Uranium-235, U-233 and Cm-245

Uranium (Nuclear Minerals) / Nuclear Power - Economics, Design, & Industry

Date posted: 01/14/10

This paper explores the possibility of manufacturing very small reactors from U-235, U-233 and Cm-245. Pin type reactor systems fueled with uranium or curium metal zirconium hydride (UZrH or CmZrH) are compared with similar designs using U-235. Criticality measurements of homogeneous water uranium systems, suggest that reactor subsystem masses have a broad minimum for hydrogen-to-uranium atom ratios that vary from 25-250. This paper compares the masses of metal-hydride fueled reactor systems that use U-235, U-233, and Cm-245 fuel with hydrogen-to-metal atom ratios from 20-300 when cooled by gas (HeXe), liquid metal (Na), and water. The results indicate that water cooled reactors in general have the smallest reactor subsytem mass. For gas and liquid-metal cooled reactors U-233 subsystems have total masses that are about 1/2 those of similarly designed U-235 fuel reactors. Reactor subsystems consisting of 11.2% enriched Cm-245 (balance Cm-244) that can be obtained from fuel reprocessing have system masses comparable to that of U-233. The smallest reactor subsystem masses were on the order of 60-80 kg for U-233 fueled water-cooled reactors.