Post-irradiation radiochemical analytical studies on Dragon loops at AERE, Harwell, December 1962. Project DRAGON

Technical Report · Tue Jan 15 04:00:00 EST 1963

OSTI ID:4108498

Brown, P. E.; Flowers, R. H.; Lupton, D. F.M.

During the past three years the DIDO loop and, more recently, the PLUTO loop have provided information on the fission product release from the particular type of fuel originally chosen for HTR design studies. This is a cold pressed mixture of graphite dust and finely powered uranium which happens to stick together firmly and which is remarkably stable during pile irradiation and heating to temperatures around 1000°C. The atomic ratio of heavy metal to carbon is usually about 1:100, and in the PLUTO loop, which has a fuel element closely resembling a possible HTR fuel rod, the metal content comprises a 10:1 mixture of Th-232 and U-235. The granule sizes of metal and graphite in the fuel have not been closely controlled; the metal is up to 25μ diameter and the graphite up to 2μ diameter, the former having a very wide spread of sizes within this limit. The extent to which the granules retain their form during pressing and subsequent heating is not known, although it is clear that the metals react to form carbides. All the loop irradiations have indicated the pattern of fission-product escape, but in addition the PLUTO loop has provided information on the distribution of the fission-products around a gas circuit which is essentially a model reactor coolant system. The current PLUTO loop charge (ill) comprises carbon-coated UC₂ fuel particles embedded in a carbon matrix. No results are yet available on this loop. This note attempts to summarise the main features of all the experiments. Fuller accounts are given in references [1], [2], [5] and [6],

• Research Organization: Atomic Energy Establishment (AEE), Winfrith, England (United Kingdom)
• Sponsoring Organization: Atomic Energy Establishment (AEE)
• NSA Number: NSA-24-040982
• OSTI ID: 4108498
• Report Number(s): DP-Report--136; CONF-630103--7; DW--(62)35
• Country of Publication: United Kingdom
• Language: English

Related Subjects

DRAGON
FISSION PRODUCTS
FUELS
GASES
HIGH-TEMPERATURE GAS-COOLED REACTOR EXPERIMENT/fuels for
fission gas release from compacted
IN PILE LOOPS
KRYPTON
LOSSES
N38150* --Power Reactor Development--Fuels
REACTORS
XENON