Benchmark Evaluation of Plutonium Hemispheres Reflected by Steel and Oil

Conference · Sun Jun 01 04:00:00 EDT 2008

OSTI ID:935451

Bess, John Darrell

During the period from June 1967 through September 1969 a series of critical experiments was performed at the Rocky Flats Critical Mass Laboratory with spherical and hemispherical plutonium assemblies as nested hemishells as part of a Nuclear Safety Facility Experimental Program to evaluate operational safety margins for the Rocky Flats Plant. These assemblies were both bare and fully or partially oil-reflected. Many of these experiments were subcritical with an extrapolation to critical configurations or critical at a particular oil height. Existing records reveal that 167 experiments were performed over the course of 28 months. Unfortunately, much of the data was not recorded. A reevaluation of the experiments had been summarized in a report for future experimental and computational analyses. This report examines only fifteen partially oil-reflected hemispherical assemblies. Fourteen of these assemblies also had close-fitting stainless-steel hemishell reflectors, used to determine the effective critical reflector height of oil with varying steel-reflector thickness. The experiments and their uncertainty in keff values were evaluated to determine their potential as valid criticality benchmark experiments of plutonium.

• Research Organization: Idaho National Laboratory (INL)
• Sponsoring Organization: DOE - NE
• DOE Contract Number: AC07-99ID13727
• OSTI ID: 935451
• Report Number(s): INL/CON-08-13758
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS
BENCHMARKS
CRITICAL MASS
CRITICALITY
EVALUATION
EXTRAPOLATION
PLUTONIUM
RADIATION PROTECTION
ROCKY FLATS PLANT
SAFETY MARGINS
STEELS
THICKNESS
benchmark evaluation
oil
plutonium hemispheres
steel