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performance of the fuel during anticipated operational transients. Since such safety-related
fuel performance information would be developed as part of the fuel recycle program dis-
cussed in Section 5.2, the R&D costs for this aspect are mentioned here only for completeness.
Reactor components development has been included since, in principle, the use of
alternate fuels might change the bases for reactor design sufficiently that additional com-
ponents development could be required. The extent of the reactor design modifications re-
quired to accomnodate a change from a reactor's reference fuel to denatured fuel would, of
course, vary with the reactor type.
The third aspect of fuel-cycle-related R&D is the reactor/fuel cycle demnstration.
This demonstration includes the core physics design and safety analysis, which identifies
any changes in design basis events or in reactor design necessitated by the denatured
uranium-thorium fuel cycles, the preparation of an analysis report (SAR) , and the subse-
quent in-reactor demonstration of substantial quantities of denatured fuels.
In summary, a number of assumptions have been made to arrive at a point of refer-
ence for evaluating the research and development required for reactors to be commercialized
on a DUTH fuel cycle within the postulated schedule.
In particular, it has been assumed
that the prototype plant stage either has been completed or can be bypassed for HTGRs,
HWRs, and SSCRs, and thus the remaining R,D&D related to the reactor concept itself is
that required to operate a connnercial-size demonstration plant. The demonstration plants
are based on each reactor's reference fuel rather than on a DUTH fuel; to convert the
reactors to a DUTH fuel will require additional R,D&D that will be fuel-cycle-related.
For the LWRs, which have long passed the demonstration stage on their reference fuel, all
the reactor R,D&D required to operate the reactors on a DUTH fuel is fuel-cycle-related.
The demonstration program in this case would be the demonstration of DUTH fuel in a
current-generation LWR. (Note: This discussion does not consider reactor R,D&D to
substantially improve the resource utilization of LWRs, which, as is pointed out in
Section 4.1 and Chapters 6 and 7, is currently being studied as'one approach for increas-
ing the power production from a fixed resource base.)
This evaluation has also required that assumptions be made regarding the degree of
financial support that could be expected from the government. These assumptions, and the
criteria on which they are based, are presented in the discussions below on each reactor
type. While the assumptions regarding government participation are unavoidably arbitrary
and may be subject to debate, it is to be pointed out that basically the same assumptions
have been made for all reactor types. Thus the reader may scale the costs presented to
correspond to other sets of assumptions.
Finally, it is to be noted that while the nuclear power systems included in this
study of the denatured 233U fuel cycle include fast breeder reactors, no estimates are
included in this section for FBRs. Estimated research and development cost schedules for
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