Neutronics benchmark of a MOX assembly with near-weapons-grade plutonium

Conference · Sat Aug 01 04:00:00 EDT 1998

OSTI ID:666162

Difilippo, F C; Fisher, S E

One of the proposed ways to dispose of surplus weapons-grade plutonium (Pu) is to irradiate the high-fissile material in light-water reactors in order to reduce the Pu enrichment to the level of spent fuels from commercial reactors. Considerable experience has been accumulated about the behavior of mixed-oxide (MOX) uranium and plutonium fuels for plutonium recycling in commercial reactors, but the experience is related to Pu enrichments typical of spent fuels quite below the values of weapons-grade plutonium. Important decisions related to the kind of reactors to be used for the disposition of the plutonium are going to be based on calculations, so the validation of computational algorithms related to all aspects of the fuel cycle (power distributions, isotopics as function of the burnup, etc.), for weapons-grade isotopics is very important. Analysis of public domain data reveals that the cycle-2 irradiation in the Quad cities boiling-water reactor (BWR) is the most recent US destructive examination. This effort involved the irradiation of five MOX assemblies using 80 and 90% fissile plutonium. These benchmark data were gathered by General Electric under the sponsorship of the Electric Power Research Institute. It is emphasized, however, that global parameters are not the focus of this benchmark, since the five bundles containing MOX fuels did not significantly affect the overall core performance. However, since the primary objective of this work is to compare against measured post-irradiation assembly data, the term benchmark is applied here. One important reason for performing the benchmark on Quad Cities irradiation is that the fissile blends (up to 90%) are higher than reactor-grade and, quite close to, weapons-grade isotopics.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab., Computational Physics and Engineering Div., TN (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Research, Washington, DC (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-96OR22464
• OSTI ID: 666162
• Report Number(s): ORNL/CP--96309; CONF-981003--; ON: DE98007148
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS
ALGORITHMS
BENCHMARKS
BURNUP
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
FUEL ASSEMBLIES
MIXED OXIDE FUELS
PLUTONIUM
POST-IRRADIATION EXAMINATION
QUAD CITIES-1 REACTOR
REACTOR OPERATION