Design and Nuclear-Safety Related Simulations of Bare-Pellet Test Irradiations for the Production of Pu-238 in the High Flux Isotope Reactor using COMSOL

Conference · Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2012

OSTI ID:1055089

Freels, James D ^[1]; Jain, Prashant K ^[1]; Hobbs, Randy W ^[1]

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1. ORNL

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)is developing technology to produce plutonium-238 for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as a power source material for powering vehicles while in deep-space[1]. The High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) of ORNL has been utilized to perform test irradiations of incapsulated neptunium oxide (NpO2) and aluminum powder bare pellets for purposes of understanding the performance of the pellets during irradiation[2]. Post irradiation examinations (PIE) are currently underway to assess the effect of temperature, thermal expansion, swelling due to gas production, fission products, and other phenomena

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR)
• Sponsoring Organization: Work for Others (WFO)
• DOE Contract Number: DE-AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1055089
• Resource Relation: Conference: COMSOL Conference Boston 2012, Newton, MA (near Boston), MA, USA, 20121003, 20121005
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

NESDPS Office of Nuclear Energy Space and Defense Power Systems
nuclear fuel
heat transfer
fluid flow
structural mechanics
COMSOL
thermal expansion