Nuclear Criticality Control and Safety of Plutonium-Uranium Fuel Mixtures Outside Reactors
The ANSI/ANS 8.12 standard was first approved in July 1978. At that time, this edition was applicable to operations with plutonium-uranium oxide (MOX) fuel mixtures outside reactors and was limited to subcritical limits for homogeneous systems. The next major revision, ANSI/ANS-8.12-1987, included the addition of subcritical limits for heterogeneous systems. The standard was subsequently reaffirmed in February 1993. During late 1990s, substantial work was done by the ANS 8.12 Standard Working Group to re-examine the technical data presented in the standard using the latest codes and cross section sets. Calculations performed showed good agreement with the values published in the standard. This effort resulted in the reaffirmation of the standard in March 2002. The standard is currently in a maintenance mode. After 2002, activities included discussions to determine the future direction of the standard and to follow the MOX standard development by the International Standard Organization (ISO). In 2007, the Working Group decided to revise the standard to extend the areas of applicability by providing a wider range of subcritical data. The intent is to cover a wider domain of MOX fuel fabrication and operations. It was also decided to follow the ISO MOX standard specifications (related to MOX density and isotopics) and develop a new set of subcritical limits for homogeneous systems. This has resulted in the submittal (and subsequent approval) of the project initiation notification system form (PINS) in 2007.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 945850
- Report Number(s):
- LLNL-CONF-405023; TRN: US0901110
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Presented at: 2008 American Nuclear Society Winter Meeting, Reno, NV, United States, Nov 09 - Nov 13, 2008
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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