Abstract
A wide-ranging set of reactor physics studies were presented that support HFIR conversion and phase 1 of the reactor physics validation roadmap. Verification and validation, as well as methods development and deployment, are crucial to achieving confidence in codes and better characterizing fuel designs and performance levels. An agile framework making use of Shift, MCNP, and SCALE/ORIGEN was discussed that enhances the LEU fuel design and characterization efforts. The detailed depletion code-to-code verification and validation study indicated good agreement between HFIRCON, Shift, and VESTA results and with experimentally obtained 235U enrichment distributions, providing additional confidence in these codes. Comprehensive fuel distribution, sensitivity, and uncertainty studies indicated similarities between the HEU U3O8-Al and LEU U3Si2-Al cores. Furthermore, it is anticipated that the neutron scattering, isotope production, and materials irradiation research capabilities can be maintained with LEU as long as the reactor power is uprated from 85 to 95 MW. HFIR LEU-based reactor physics efforts will continue into the future to support validation roadmap, fuel design, performance characterization, and safety basis efforts.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 974-977 |
| Number of pages | 4 |
| Journal | Transactions of the American Nuclear Society |
| Volume | 129 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2023 |
| Event | 2023 Transactions of the American Nuclear Society Winter Conference and Expo, ANS 2023 - Washington, United States Duration: Nov 12 2023 → Nov 15 2023 |
Funding
This material is based on work supported by the DOE National Nuclear Security Administration Office of M3. This research was performed on HFIR, a DOE SC User Facility operated by ORNL under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725. 1 Notice: This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy (DOE). The US government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the US government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for US government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan).
