Journal of Physical Studies 25(2), Article 2202 [7 pages] (2021)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.30970/jps.25.2202

WAVE NUCLEAR BURNING IN SPHERICAL GEOMETRY

M. R. Shcherbyna , V. O. Tarasov , V. P. Smolyar 

Odesa National Polytechnic University,
Department of Theoretical and Experimental Nuclear Physics,
1, Shevchenko Ave., 65044 Odesa, Ukraine,
e-mail: shcherbeenamisha@gmail.com

Received 18 January 2021; in final form 12 February 2021; accepted 11 March 2021; published online 25 May 2021

Every year, human energy consumption is constantly growing, so the role of nuclear energy will only increase over time. However, the reserves of ${^{235}U}$, which is the main fissile nuclide in nuclear energy, are limited and should be depleted in the coming decades. But this problem can be avoided if we use the huge reserves of ${^{238}U}$. This article aims to investigate the feasibility of implementing one of the regimes of a fundamentally new and not yet practically implemented process in nuclear energy – the nuclear traveling wave in a uranium-plutonium medium, where plutonium-239 is formed from ${^{238}U}$.

A nuclear traveling wave may form in a uranium-plutonium medium as a moving wave of plutonium-239 fission. This paper considers the possibility of the formation of such a wave in a spherical uranium-plutonium medium, and the study is conducted in spherical geometry.

A majority of works studying the traveling wave mode of nuclear fission consider 1D or cylindrical 3D geometry. There are only a few works devoted to the study of this problem in spherical geometry. It should also be noted that the nuclear reactions considered in the present paper involve the participation of epithermal neutrons, which also significantly distinguishes our work from previous works on this topic, because most of them consider thermal neutrons.

Since this problem is spherically symmetric, it allowed us to replace 3D modeling of the whole sphere with 1D modeling along the radius of this sphere. We have developed kinetic equations describing a nuclear traveling wave and modeled it by numerically solving these kinetic equations. An improved explicit-implicit numerical calculation scheme was used, which allowed us to increase the temporal step of the simulation.

Key words: nuclear burning wave, modeling, epithermal neutrons, uranium-plutonium medium.

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