Objectives

The general objectives of this course are to give the students (1) experience in a multidisciplinary design and analysis of a complex nuclear system, applying know-how acquired in the core courses of nuclear engineering; (2) Opportunity to innovate; (3) Experience in collaborative research work and (4) Experience in writing and presenting project reports.

Prerequisites

UCB NE undergraduate core courses or consent of instructor.

Course outline

The focus of the course will be the students’ design project. The students will be organized in design team. Each team will have its design project. Each team member will have his/her own well-defined task. One of the team members will act as the project leader. The duty of the project leader is to coordinate and integrate the work of the team members. The instructor acts more as a coach than a teacher. After helping the students to define the concept of the system to be designed, the instructor shepherds the students through a comprehensive design experience. Students must take charge of their own research, using the instructor as a consultant and resource to point them in the right direction when they "get stuck."

Project definition

This year the projects will be related to the LIFE (Laser Inertial Fusion Energy) fusion-fission hybrid reactor concept of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). This highly innovative and very challenging reactor concept is to operate on a once-through, self-contained fuel cycle that is claimed by LLNL to offer the following:

“(1) eliminate the need for uranium enrichment; (2) utilize over 90% of the energy content of the nuclear fuel; (3) eliminate the need for spent fuel chemical separation facilities; (4) maintain the fission blanket subcritical at all times (keff <0.90); and (5) minimize future requirements for deep underground geological waste repositories and minimize actinide content in the end-of-life nuclear waste below the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) attractiveness Level E (the lowest). Options to burn natural or depleted U, Th, U/Th mixtures, Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) without chemical separations of weapons-attractive actinide streams, and excess weapons Pu or highly enriched U (HEU) are possible and under consideration. Because the fission blanket is always subcritical and decay heat removal is possible via passive mechanisms, the technology is inherently safe. Many technical challenges must be met, but a LIFE solution could provide a sustainable path for worldwide growth of nuclear power for electricity production and hydrogen generation.”

Moses, E.I., et al., “A Sustainable Nuclear Fuel Cycle Based On Laser Inertial Fusion Energy,”

Proceedings of the ICENES 2009, Ericeira, Portugal, June 2009.

The objectives of the student’s projects will be to:

1. Verify the LLNL published performance characteristics and, if possible, improve upon them;
   

2. Compare the performance of a LIFE system using thorium versus using depleted uranium for the fission fuel;
   

3. Compare the performance of an energy system based on LIFE reactors against that of an energy system based on fast reactors that are operating with multi-recycling;
   

4. Study the feasibility of a LIFE-like reactor in which the fusion neutron source is replaced by a high-leakage fast fission reactor core.
   

Details of the specific projects to be undertaken by the students will be discussed in class.

Grading

1. 5% for research plan
   

2. 10% for progress report
   

3. 25% for oral presentation
   

4. 60% for project summary report