Fueled Core Research Articles

Reduction in Reactor Vessel Irradiation Through Fuel Management

Fuel management and core periphery modifications are examined for slowing pressurized water reactor (PWR) pressure vessel embrittlement by reducing the incident fast flux to the vessel Such strateg...

Failure Mechanisms for Compacted and Extruded Uranium Oxide—Aluminium Fuel Cores

(1982). Failure Mechanisms for Compacted and Extruded Uranium Oxide—Aluminium Fuel Cores. Powder Metallurgy: Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 17-23.

Preliminary assessments of carbide fuel pins during mild overpower transients in LMFBRs

Mixed carbide fuel has been proposed for advanced liquid metal fast breeder reactors (LMFBRs). In this paper the general characteristics of carbide fuel are reviewed and a survey of available data for use in safety studies is presented. A preliminary investigation of the unprotected transient overpower accident sequence postulated for a large carbide fueled reactor is also presented. The HOPE computer code is the computational tool used to analyse a conceptual core design fueled with mixed carbides of uranium and plutonium. The details of this design are presented and compared with those of the Clinch River Breeder Reactor Plant. Results of HOPE calculations for both helium and sodium bonded carbide fueled cores are presented and compared with a similar study performed on an oxide core. Conclusions are drawn based on the findings of the preliminary transient overpower studies conducted.

The European Conference on the Effect of Radiation on Materials for Fuel Element Cladding and Cores

The European Conference on the Effect of Radiation on Materials for Fuel Element Cladding and Cores

Physics experiments in a puo 2-uo 2 microlattice for the design of fuel elements in LWRs

The paper reports on experiments performed in a plutonium fueled microlattice at CSN Casaccia; these are of interest for the physics design of plutonium bearing fuel elements. The calculational methods developed at our laboratory have been exhaustively tested for their applicability to plutonium fueled cores in cold, unirradiated conditions.

An Instrument for Nondestructively Testing Fuel Core to Cladding Heat Transfer

An instrument for nondestructively mapping core to cladding heat transfer quality in nuclear fuel elements has been developed. Heat transfer defects down to in. diameter in Zircaloy-2 clad and down...

Observations on the Kinetics and Control of Gas Core Reactors

An expression is developed relating fission product residence time to fission product mass number for a hypothetical gas core vortex reactor. Utilizing the expression and considering that the fission products, Kr-87, Br-87, Kr-93, I-137, arid I-138, are also delayed neutron precursors, a modified effective delayed neutron fraction is calculated for U-233, U-235, and Pu-239 fueled cores. Temperature coefficients for the referene cores are developed as functions of reflector temperature, assuming a Maxwellian neutron spectrum. Utilizing these power coefficients and the modified effective delayed neutron fractions, the consequences of reactivity perturbations in the reference cores are analyzed. It is shown that optimally moderated gaseous fission cores should possess a high degree of inherent stability.