Fuel management for TRIGA reactor operators

Conference · Tue Jul 01 04:00:00 EDT 1980

OSTI ID:21149384

Totenbier, R E; Levine, S H ^[1]

---

1. Pennsylvania State University (United States)

One responsibility of the Supervisor of Reactor Operations is to follow the TRIGA core depletion and recommend core loading changes for refueling and special experiments. Calculations required to analyze such changes normally use digital computers and are extremely difficult to perform for one who is not familiar with computer language and nuclear reactor diffusion theory codes. The TRICOM/SCRAM program developed to perform such calculations for the Penn State TRIGA Breazeale Reactor (PSBR), has a very simple input format and is one which can be used by persons having no knowledge of computer codes. The person running the program need not understand computer language such as Fortran, but should be familiar with reactor core geometry and effects of loading changes. To further simplify the input requirements but still allow for all of the studies normally needed by the reactor operations supervisor, the options required for input have been isolated to two. Given a master deck of computer cards one needs to change only three cards; a title card, core energy history information card and one with core changes. With this input, the program can provide individual fuel element burn-up for a given period of operation and the k{sub eff} of the core. If a new loading is desired, a new master deck containing the changes is also automatically provided. The life of a new core loading can be estimated by feeding in projected core burn-up factors and observing the resulting loss in individual fuel elements. The code input and output formats have now been made sufficiently convenient and informative as to be incorporated into a standard activity for the Reactor Operations Supervisor. (author)

• Research Organization: General Atomic Co., San Diego, CA (United States)
• OSTI ID: 21149384
• Report Number(s): INIS-US--09N0119; TOC--12
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS
BURNUP
COMPUTER CODES
DIFFUSION
DIGITAL COMPUTERS
FORTRAN
FUEL ELEMENTS
FUEL MANAGEMENT
REACTOR CORES
REACTOR FUELING
REACTOR OPERATION
REACTOR OPERATORS
SCRAM
TRIGA TYPE REACTORS