Comparative study of different nuclear fuel cycle options: Quantitative analysis on material flow

As a nation develops its nuclear strategies, it must consider various aspects of nuclear energy such as sustainability, environmental‐friendliness, proliferation‐resistance, economics, technologies, and so on. A nuclear fuel cycle study could give convincing answers to many questions in regard to technical aspects. However, one nuclear fuel cycle option cannot be superior in all aspects. Therefore a nation must identify its top priority and accordingly evaluate all the possible nuclear fuel cycle options. For such a purpose, this paper examined four different fuel cycle options that are likely to be plausible under situation of Republic of Korea: once‐through cycle, DUPIC recycling, thermal recycling using MOX fuel in PWR (pressurized water reactor), and SFR (sodium cooled fast reactor) employing fuel recycling by a pyroprocess. The options have been quantitatively compared in terms of resource utilization and waste generation based on 1TWh electricity production at a ‘steady‐state’ condition as a basic analysis. This investigation covered from the front‐end of the fuel cycles to the final disposal and showed that the Pyro‐SFR recycling appears to be the most competitive from these material quantitative aspects due to the reduction of the required uranium resources and the least amount of waste generation.