The feasibility of complete recycling of TRU elements in the same PWR reactor that produced them is investigated by whole core neutronic and thermal hydraulic calculations for representative core configurations. These include micro-heterogeneous core geometry based on a Combined Non-Fertile and UO 2 (CONFU) assembly concept and macro-heterogeneous cores where fertile free fuel (FFF) pins containing TRU occupy whole assembly regions. The analysis, performed with the CASMO4-SIMULATE3 computer code package, indicate that both macro- and micro-heterogeneous PWR cores partially loaded with TRU in fertile free matrix can be designed with acceptable power peaking and core reactivity coefficients and control materials reactivity worth close to reference UO2. The efficient TRU destruction in FFF allows for minimization of TRU inventory. Macro-heterogeneous cores exhibit slightly superior thermal hydraulic performance due to a lower local power peaking and additional flexibility in positioning FFF assemblies. Whereas TRU destruction is somewhat better in the micro-heterogeneous cores due to greater exposure of TRU in FFF pins to thermal neutron flux from the neighboring UO2 pins. The MDNBR margins calculated using conservative assumptions at 18% overpower are above the W3-L correlation limit of 1.3 for all cases. However, degradation of MDNBR margin by up to 20% was observed for the most limiting TRU containing core case in comparison with the reference UO2 core.