2024-ryan-ms

This repository holds Nathan Ryan's Master's thesis.

Sections sent for review:

• Introduction
• Background
• Methodology
• Time Methodology
• Deployment Schemes
• Time Management
• Conclusions
• Appendix: LWRs

Cocktail Hour Summary

I investigated how the staggered enrichment approach (where they go from a LEU+ to a HALEU-level of enrichment) certain companies proposed for their reactors impacts the SWU and used fuel characteristics in TRISO-fueled reactors, and worked on improving Cyclus's memory efficiency by allowing facilities to wait until they need more material before putting out requests.

Potential Guiding Questions

The questions that guide this work are:

1. What are the SWU requirements for TRISO fueled reactor transitions that incorporate the proposed LEU+ to HALEU scheme?
2. If we have x growth of demand met by ARs, how much TRISO do we need, and when do we meet the demand?
3. What are the most sensitive facilities/parameters in the process?
4. What is the volume of waste and when will we run out of capacity in a Yucca mountain like facility?
5. What are the impacts of deployment schemes in NFC scenarios, and what parts are realistic or unrealistic in each? How quickly/often does the scenario meet the energy demand (we would need to identify limiting factors)?
6. Is there a significant benefit in memory and time efficiency from altering the frequency that agents interact with the DRE on?

I set out to answer Q1 and Q6. I broke this work up into two parts: 1) replication of Amanda's method with TRISO fuel (with the LEU+ to HALEU where applicable); and 2) DRE frequency evaluation.

Thesis Outline

1. Abstract.
   1. What is the research problem or question?
   2. What is the purpose of the study?
   3. What are the main conclusions or recommendations?
   4. What methods were used?
   5. What is the significance or implication of the findings?
2. Acknowledgments.
3. Introduction.
   1. Flexibility in generation and energy.
   2. Nuclear fuel cycle overview.
   3. TRISO overview.
      1. What is TRISO?
      2. How is it made?
      3. What is the current availability?
      4. What is the expected availability based on recent investments and promises?
      5. What forms might reactors use?
4. Background.
   1. Non-Equilibrium reactors.
      1. When are LWRs not operating at equilibrium?
      2. How might ARs operate differently?
   2. Cyclus.
      1. What is Cyclus? (What are the relevant functionalities of Cyclus?)
      2. What is Cycamore? (explain the specific archetypes used in the simulations)
      3. How does do these facilities interact with the DRE?
   3. Fuel cycle metrics.
      1. Isotopics.
      2. SWU.
      3. Energy production.
      4. Mass of fresh and used fuel.
      5. Questions:
         1. Why do we use this metric?
         2. Where in the fuel cycle is it impacted?
         3. How is it calculated?
         4. How does Cyclus treat this metric? (is that a valuable question, distinct from the above by relating to the software)
         5. What assumptions impact this metric?
5. Transition scenarios.
   1. Outline Amanda's methodology.
   2. Identify the intersection of scope and highlight the differences.
6. Deployment Scenarios (Results).
   1. Give a paragraph about the regions/institutions you use.
      1. Highlight how the replacement at decommissioning works (ARs vs LWRs), and how new demand is met.
   2. Single reactor scenarios.
   3. Greedy deployment.
   4. Pre-determined deployment.
   5. Deployment cap.
   6. Random deployment.
   7. Initially random, then greedy deployment.
7. Sensitivity
8. Conclusions
   1. High-level overview: What were the guiding questions (not in question form), and how were they addressed?
   2. Limitations and assumptions.
   3. Future work.

Amanda's Methodology

1. Metrics:
   1. energy generated,
   2. the number of advanced reactors deployed,
   3. the mass of enriched uranium, mass of feed uranium,
   4. SWU capacity required to produce the enriched uranium,
   5. and the UNF discharged from the reactors.
2. Transition Scenarios
   1. Used a greedy algorithm to predetermine when they would be deployed.
   2. Simulation details
      1. Ran from 1965-2090.
      2. Timestep of 1 month.
      3. Deployed solo LWRs, LWRs + MMR/Xe, LWRs + MMR/Xe + VOYGR, and LWRs + MMR + Xe + VOYGR in no growth and 1% growth scenarios.
      4. All in the same region, but one Deployinst for LWRs and another for ARs.
   3. Reactors
      1. LWRs from PRIS, USNC MMR, X-energy Xe-100, VOYGR (look at her thesis table 3.1)
      2. Started ARs in 2025 for "a bounding case for an aggressive deployment of these reactors."
      3. Didn't have the new Vogtle reactors.
      4. Only reactors over 400 MWe to avoid test or research reactors.
   4. Fuel cycle facilities: mine, enrichment, reactor, tails sink, cooling pool, repository.
3. Sensitivity Study
   1. Comparisons
      1. Build-share (x), transition start time (y), on SWU (z)
      2. Build-share (x), transition start time (y), on fuel mass (z)
      3. Build-share (x), burnup (y), on fuel mass (z)
      4. Build-share (x), percent of LWR lifetime extended (y), on fuel mass (z)

Questions for the literature

ms-thesis-template

This repo holds the template for UIUC master's thesis.

• By Jin Whan Bae (Edited version of the uiucthesis2014 Package/Class)
• By Stephen Mayhew (Slightly) Edited version of the uiucthesis2009 Package/Class
• By Charles Kiyanda (Edited version of the uiucthesis07 Package/Class)
• by Tim Head (based on the Peter Czoschke version) (Edited version of the uiucthesis Package/Class)
• by Peter Czoschke (based on the original version by David Hull)

Description

uiucthesis2018 is a LaTex package for formatting theses in the format required by the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

To compile:

Run make after making the appropriate edits to the main.tex file.