Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Comparison of Neutronics Performance Characteristics of the Proposed NIST Reactor with Different LEU Fuels

Published

Author(s)

Danyal J Turkoglu, Zeyun Wu, Robert E. Williams, Thomas Henderson Newton

Abstract

A conceptual design of a new reactor with a horizontally-split core using low-enriched uranium silicide dispersion (U3Si2/Al) fuel has recently been studied as a potential replacement for the National Bureau of Standards Reactor (NBSR). In this paper, the low-enriched UMo fuels (monolithic U10Mo and U7Mo/Al dispersion) and U3Si2/Al fuel are compared with the objective of identifying the best fuel candidate for maximizing cold neutron production in this proposed new reactor. For the comparisons, fuel inventories for multi-cycle equilibrium cores were calculated for each fuel based on a 30 day reactor cycle at 20 MW power. With its very high U density, the potential to load more U in the core with U10Mo monolithic fuel was explored with test cases using an alternate fuel management scheme, a higher power level (30 MW), or a longer cycle (45 days).
Proceedings Title
Proceedings of the PHYSOR 2018, Cancun, Mexico
Conference Dates
April 22-26, 2018
Conference Location
Cancun
Conference Title
PHYSOR 2018: Reactor Physics Paving the Way Towards more Efficient Systems

Keywords

Low-enriched uranium, Research reactor, Neutronics performance characteristics, cold neutrons

Citation

, D. , Wu, Z. , , R. and , T. (2018), Comparison of Neutronics Performance Characteristics of the Proposed NIST Reactor with Different LEU Fuels, Proceedings of the PHYSOR 2018, Cancun, Mexico, Cancun, -1, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=925481 (Accessed November 11, 2024)

Issues

If you have any questions about this publication or are having problems accessing it, please contact reflib@nist.gov.

Created June 1, 2018, Updated February 27, 2020