Radioactivity of spent TRIGA fuel

Journal Article · Wed Apr 29 00:00:00 EDT 2015 · AIP Conference Proceedings

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4916856· OSTI ID:22391624

Nabil, A. R. A.; Alfred, S. L.; Hamzah, N. S.; Abi, M. J. B.; Rawi, M. Z. M.; Abu, M. P. ^[1]

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1. Reactor Department, Malaysian Nuclear Agency, Bangi, 43000 Kajang, Selangor (Malaysia)

Some of the oldest TRIGA fuel in the Malaysian Reaktor TRIGA PUSPATI (RTP) is approaching the limit of its end of life with burn-up of around 20%. Hence it is prudent for us to start planning on the replacement of the fuel in the reactor and other derivative activities associated with it. In this regard, we need to understand all of the risk associated with such operation and one of them is to predict the radioactivity of the fuel, so as to estimate the safety of our working conditions. The radioactivity of several fuels are measured and compared with simulation results to confirm the burnup levels of the selected fuels. The radioactivity measurement are conducted inside the water tank to reduce the risk of exposure and in this case the detector wrapped in plastics are lowered under water. In nuclear power plant, the general practice was to continuously burn the fuel. In research reactor, most operations are based on the immediate needs of the reactor and our RTP for example operate periodically. By integrating the burnup contribution for each core configuration, we simplify the simulation of burn up for each core configuration. Our results for two (2) fuel however indicates that the dose from simulation underestimate the actual dose from our measurements. Several postulates are investigated but the underlying reason remain inconclusive.

• OSTI ID: 22391624
• Journal Information: AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 1659, Issue 1; Conference: NuSTEC2014: Nuclear Science, Technology, and Engineering Conference 2014, Skudai, Johor (Malaysia), 11-13 Nov 2014; Other Information: (c) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0094-243X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
BURNUP
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
HAZARDS
NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS
PERIODICITY
PLASTICS
PUSPATI
RADIOACTIVITY
REACTOR OPERATION
REACTOR SAFETY
RESEARCH REACTORS
SPENT FUELS
TRIGA TYPE REACTORS
WATER
WORKING CONDITIONS