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Stage 1 : Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) (Fig. 5).mayurav wrote:Thanks! So does this mean that future AHWR fuel cycles will not require Pu (or U233) on a sustained basis (apart from startup) once it attains equilibrium?Arun_S wrote: The reprocessing will be simpler but largely in-line with Pu driver based AHWR-I/II design. And of course there will no Pu driver required.
Stage 2 : High temperature reactor based power packs.
Stage 3 : Accelerator driven fertile converters.
Stage 4 : Accelerator driven system with a fast reactor sub-critical
core together with a mainly thorium fuelled thermal core somewhat
similar to that present in AHWR.
Stage 1 : Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) (Fig. 5).
This is the classic AHWR concept. Will require lot of fissile material to charge the start-up. Thereafter at equilibrium will smaller flow of fissile driver fuel. As AHWR reactor design matures this hold promise of not requiring any driver fuel in-flow.
Stage 2 : High temperature reactor based power packs.
The objective here is to prove smaller form factor reactor and to prove higher efficiency thermal energy conversion to electricity and in parallel direct conversion to Hydrogen gas.
Stage 3 : Accelerator driven fertile converters.
This reactor core is almost identical to Stage-1 classic. Just that Pu fuel pins are not used. The neutrons gap earlier filled by fissile Pu is replaced with ADS driven neutron flow.
Stage 4 : Accelerator driven system with a fast reactor sub-critical
core together with a mainly thorium fuelled thermal core somewhat
similar to that present in AHWR.
Again very similar to classic AHWR. Instead its core will be be a fast core (no moderator) and ADS will directly fission Thorium there generating many more neutron than via ADS driven spallation source. The excess neutron from fast core will fill in the neutron gap earlier filled by fissile driver fuel.
Stage 1,3,4, are most promising. With Stage 3,4, no driver fuel is needed.