Westinghouse has recently completed the evaluation and optimization of nuclear fuel cycles for both 18-month (520 EFPD) and 24-month (700 EFPD) fuel cycle lengths in high power density Westinghouse plants with 17x17 fuel.&nbsp; Additionally, Westinghouse has a library of similar fuel cycle analysis for other Light Water Reactors including PWR, BWR and VVER.&nbsp; Westinghouse has developed a levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) method to compare the different fuel cycle options on an equivalent net present value basis in which the costs and timing for current and future fuel commodities, base fuel fabrication, burnable absorbers, fuel fabrication adders, Intermediate Enriched Uranium (IEU) facility adders, pre-operational interest, incore carrying charges, used fuel storage, used fuel disposal, plant operations, maintenance, outages, replacement power, generation revenue, capital improvement, licensing transition costs, uranium transition costs and others are explicitly accounted and discounted back to a common reference time irrespective of the fuel cycle length or plant design.&nbsp; Where appropriate, assumptions have also been made to incorporate reactor operational and other cost aspects.This paper presents the methodology used to evaluate the LCOE of a power reactor that is independent of the reactor design and applies that methodology to sample fuel management cases of arbitrary fuel cycle length.&nbsp; These evaluations make a number of conclusions that are dependent on the power density of the plant.&nbsp; In general, many nuclear power plants operating within reasonable US cost models are generally at minimum LCOE when operated on 24-month cycles within the current licensing regime of peak rod burnup &lt; 62 GWD/TU and fuel enrichment &lt; 5 w/o 235U, hereafter referred to as “LEU”.&nbsp; The exception to this conclusion comes for the high-power density 17x17 Westinghouse units where the current licensing regime of 18-month LEU fuel cycles results in minimum LCOE.&nbsp; These Westinghouse plants, when operating on 24-month cycles, require feed batch fractions well above ½ core loading resulting in steep fuel cycle cost penalties that cannot be compensated by operating cost savings or additional generation revenue arising from 24-month cycle operation.&nbsp; Westinghouse has explored lifting the current licensing regime restrictions and has found that, when Intermediate Enriched Uranium (IEU) (5 w/o 235U &lt; IEU &lt; 20 w/o 235U) and high burnup (HBU) in which lead rod burnup in the range of 75 GWD/TU are allowed, the optimal cycle length for these Westinghouse plants changes from 18-months to 24-months.&nbsp; This conclusion holds true over a wide range of input economic assumptions.&nbsp; Westinghouse has also evaluated 18-month cycles for Westinghouse units using current enrichment and burnup licensing paradigm and for the case where IEU is enabled and HBU is licensed.&nbsp; Westinghouse concludes that the IEU and HBU for 18-month cycle option for Westinghouse units results in a significant penalty when compared to both the 24-month HBU, which is the most economical, and the 18-month cycle under the LEU paradigm.

Levelized Cost of Electricity Evaluation Methodology Applied to High-Burnup 18 and 24-Month Fuel Cycle

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/ICONE/ICONE28/volume/85246

2021 28th International Conference on Nuclear Engineering (ICONE28)

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