Xenon Poisoning in the ISHR

Technical Report · Wed May 27 00:00:00 EDT 1953

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/4351806· OSTI ID:4351806

Haubenreich, P. N. ^[1]

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1. Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)

Xenon-135 is created in the reactor core and is distributed throughout the entire system. It is destroyed by burnup and by natural radioactive decay. Some xenon is removed in liquid withdrawn for chemical processing. More might be removed by stripping xenon from a part of the gas stream. How the Xe¹³⁵ concentration in the fuel solution is related to the various parameters is described below. A factor of some importance and much uncertainty is the mass transfer coefficient in the gas separator. Estimates based on results with wetted-wall columns range from 30 to 200 lb mol/hr ft² (mol fraction). Because of this uncertainty calculations have been made for several values up to 200 lb mol/hr ft² (mol fraction). Figure 2 shows how the xenon poisoning is affected by the amount of liquid flowing through the high pressure storage tank. In each case it is assumed that no liquid or gas is removed for processing. Figure 3 shows the effect of xenon removal in process streams. Circulation through the storage tank is 100 GPM in each of these cases. For a chemical processing cycle time of about 20 days, lUO liters/day will be withdrawn. It can be seen that the effect of xenon removal in this amount of liquid is negligible. Xenon poisoning can be cut down sharply if a part of the gas stream has the xenon removed from it. The lower curves show the effect of removing all the xenon from 0.1, 0.5 and 1.0 CFM of gas.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP); US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-26
• NSA Number: NSA-11-007779
• OSTI ID: 4351806
• Report Number(s): CF-53-5-202
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS
73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS
BURNUP
Burnup
Criticality
DECAY
DISTRIBUTION
Decay
Distribution
EQUATIONS
Equations
FUEL SOLUTIONS
Fuel Solutions
HOMOGENEOUS REACTORS
Homogenous Reactors
ISHR
LIQUID FLOW
Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP)
POISONING
PRESSURE
Poisoning
QUANTITY RATIO
REACTOR CORE
REACTORS
REPROCESSING
SEPARATION PROCESSES
STORAGE
TRANSPORT
XENON 135
Xenon