Fissile Sample Worths in the Uranium/Iron Benchmark

Conference · Sun Oct 30 00:00:00 EDT 1983

OSTI ID:5867840

Schaefer, R. W. ^[1]; Bucher, R. G. ^[1]

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1. Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)

One of the long-standing problems from LMFBR critical experiments is the central worth discrepancy, the consistent overprediction of the reactivity associated with introducing a small material sample near the center of an assembly. Reactivity (sample worth) experiments in ZPR-9, assembly 34, the Uranium/Iron Benchmark (U/Fe), were aimed at investigating this discrepancy. U/Fe had a large, single-region core whose neutronics was governed almost entirely by ²³⁵U and iron. The essentially one-dimensional plate unit cell had one 1.6 mm-wide column of 93% enriched uranium (U(93)) near the center, imbedded in about 50 mm of iron and stainless steel. The neutron spectrum was roughly comparable to that of an LMFBR, but the adjoint spectrum was much flatter than an LMFBR's. The worths of four different fissile materials were measured and the worth of U(93) was measured using several different experimental techniques.

• Research Organization: Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP)
• DOE Contract Number: W-31-109-ENG-38
• OSTI ID: 5867840
• Report Number(s): CONF-831047-50; ON: DE83014695
• Resource Relation: Conference: American Nuclear Society Winter Meeting , San Francisco, CA (United States), 30 Oct 1983
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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REACTOR KINETICS
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