The Spent Fuel Safety Experiment
- Sandia National Lab. (SNL-CA), Livermore, CA (United States)
The Department of Energy is conducting an ongoing investigation of the consequences of taking fuel burnup into account in the design of spent fuel transportation packages. A series of experiments, collectively called the Spent Fuel Safety Experiment (SFSX), has been devised to provide integral benchmarks for testing computer-generated predictions of spent fuel behavior. A set of experiments is planned in which sections of unirradiated fuel rods are interchanged with similar sections of spent PWR fuel rods in a critical assembly. By determining the critical size of the arrays, one can obtain benchmark data for comparison with criticality safety calculations. The integral reactivity worth of the spent fuel can be assessed by comparing the measured delayed critical fuel loading with and without spent fuel. An analytical effort to model the experiments and anticipate the core loadings required to yield the delayed critical conditions runs in parallel with the experimental effort.
- Research Organization:
- Sandia National Lab. (SNL-CA), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC04-94AL85000
- OSTI ID:
- 102184
- Report Number(s):
- SAND--95-1509C; CONF-9509100--17; ON: DE95015090
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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