Criticality Facilities and Programs at Sandia National Laboratories
- Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
The reactor facilities at Sandia National Laboratories have hosted a number of reactors and critical experiments. A critical experiment is currently being done to support an ongoing investigation by the US Department of Energy 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 pressurized water reactor (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 SFSX provides a direct measurement of the reactivity effects of spent PWR fuel using a well-characterized, spent fuel sample. The SFSX also provides an experimental measurement of the end-effect, i.e., the reactivity effect of the variation of the burnup profile at the ends of PWR fuel rods. The design of the SFSX is optimized to yield accurate benchmark measurements of the effects of interest, well above experimental uncertainties.
- Research Organization:
- Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC04-94AL85000
- OSTI ID:
- 207429
- Report Number(s):
- SAND--96-0325C; CONF-9509297--2; ON: DE96007706
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS
22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS
42 ENGINEERING
ACPR REACTOR
CRITICALITY
Critical Experiments
DESIGN
EXPERIMENT PLANNING
Fuel Burnup
Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP)
PWR TYPE REACTORS
REACTIVITY
SAFETY
SPENT FUEL CASKS
SPENT FUELS
SPR-2 REACTOR
SPR-3 REACTOR
Spent Fuel Safety Experiment (SFSX)
Spent Fuel Transportation Packages Design