Economic Analysis of Thorium-uranium Fuel Cycle Introduced Into PWRs

Using PWR of Daya Bay Unit 1 as the reference reactor, a validated computer code was used to calculate the fuel cycle costs for uranium fuel cycle and thorium-uranium fuel cycle over the following 20 operational years respectively. The calculation results show that the thorium-uranium fuel cycle is economically competitive with the uranium fuel cycle when reprocessing mode is adopted. For thorium-uranium fuel cycle, if the price of natural uranium is higher than 120 /pound U₃O₈, the fuel cycle cost of the direct disposal mode is greater than that of the reprocessing mode. Therefore, when the uranium price may maintain a high level long-termly, adopting reprocessing mode will benefit the economic advantage for the thorium-uranium fuel cycle introduced into PWRs.