CHAPTER 12 - EXPLOITATION

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the making and testing of the Dragon Reactor Experiment (DRE). During 1961, the complex steel vessel that would house the reactor proper was pressurized and leak-tested at the contractor's works. The design of all the internal parts of the reactor was completed, and dummies were made of the core elements. Over the rest of 1964, zero-energy tests on DRE were made to check the physics behavior of the core and the integrity of the external circuits. Hot tests began in the Spring of 1965 and the approach to power in June. From the beginning of operation, it was evident that DRE was a highly successful design. The fuel behaved remarkably, retaining fission products and withstanding burnups beyond what even the most optimistic would have dared to forecast just a few years before. On the engineering side, the circuit was astonishingly leak-tight, the gas circulators running in their gas bearings behaved impeccably, the charge mechanism with its complex maneuvers inside the pressure vessel gave no trouble, corrosion was negligible in the primary circuit, control was straightforward, and the reactor proved not to be temperamental.