Extension of the “42-0” approach to ternary fuels and application to a thorium-fed, minor-actinides-burner ADS

When dealing with an accelerator-driven system (ADS), fuel cycle performances are a main element to be considered in the design. The higher cost of these systems, relative to critical fast reactors, makes indeed their justification sustainable only in a perspective of serving fuel and waste management strategies. Disposing of a logical scheme, and an analytical frame, for driving the definition of the core configuration so as to target by design the desired performances, might therefore be a cornerstone for fully exploiting the potential of an ADS. In this work, such a logical scheme, originally developed for the case of an ADS fueled with a binary mixture of plutonium and minor actinides, to identify the optimal design of a proliferation resistant core for the transmutation of the minor actinides, is extended to the more general case of ternary fuels --encompassing almost all cases of practical interest. The rationale for the approach is presented and justified, and analytical considerations added for quantitative estimates to be possible. Finally, a practical example of application is presented to a specific case, with rather general driving criteria to show the potential of the presented approach. © 2019, Società Italiana di Fisica / Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.