Evaluation Of Program DRAGON To Processing Thorium Fuel Applicability And The Calculation Of CANFLEX Bundle

Now, the nuclear fuel is more dependent on the 235 U, according to the current speed of development in nuclear power, the 235 U resources will be exhausted before the fossil fuel. 232 Th is a fertile nuclide, it can be the proliferated to 233 U after capturing a neutron. The reserves of thorium resources are about 6 times that of uranium resources, moreover, thorium fuel produces less long-lived nuclear waste. So, the study of thorium fuel has great significance in sustainable development of nuclear energy.The program DRAGON, a reactor components transport calculation program, was researched and developed by Montreal Polytechnic University. It has good computational accuracy when using nuclear date library that provided by WLUP to calculate Th-U benchmarks. But for the applicability of thorium fuel, due to the accuracy of the thorium nuclear data and Thorium uranium nuclear resonance, the interference effect, more works should be done.This study validates the thorium-uranium fuel benchmarks by using program DRAGON with 12 types of WIMS-D format library from WLUP to evaluate the reliability and precision of different WIMS-D format library. The results show that: in the default mesh parameters and high moderator volume fraction, the calculation error of program DRAGON increases with the moderator and fuel volume ratio increasing, and it improves by optimizing the mesh. On the basis of mesh optimization, endfb6 and endfb6 gx libraries are the best in processing light water moderated thorium-uranium lattice problems; simultaneously, jendl3 and jendl3 gx libraries are most close to experimental values in processing heavy water moderated thorium-uranium lattice problems.DRAGLIB is a format of nuclear library in program DRAGON, it has finer spectrum, more diversified nuclide, more complete burnup chain and supports the advanced calculation method of resonance. This paper also discussed the program NJOY processing DRAGLIB format library, and validated reliability preliminarily.CANFLEX is a type of bundle in advanced CANDU reactor(ACR). Using program DRAGON to development of uranium and thorium fuel in CANFLEX bundle model and calculating the parameters of neutron preliminary. The results show that: in uranium fuel CANFLEX bundle, it had different variation in 4 rings about isotopic densities changed with burnup. The outer ring of 235 U isotopic densities decreased was most obvious, the inner ring changed was the most gentle for presence of toxic elements Dy. In thorium fuel CANFLEX bundle, 232 Th isotopic densities was decreased with the burnup increased. 233 U increased gradually with the accumulated amount of 232 Th proliferation, isotopic density rise.The calculation model and the results of this study can be used for the research the characteristics of thorium uranium fuel reactor. Which provide a reference for development of heavy water moderated thorium fuel.