US EPA

3784345 

Technical Report 

Partial Safety Analysis for a Reduced Uranium Enrichment Core for the High Flux Isotope Reactor 

Velit, CG; Primm, RT; Gehin, JC 

2009 

NTIS/03420078 

GRA and I 

GRA and I 

A computational model of the reactor core of the High Flux Isotope Rector (HFIR) was developed in order to analyze non-destructive accidents caused by transients during reactor operation. The reactor model was built for the latest version of the nuclear analysis software package called Program for the Analysis of Reactor Transients (PARET). Analyses performed with the model constructed were compared with previous data obtained with other tools in order to benchmark the code. Finally, the model was used to analyze the behavior of the reactor under transients using a different nuclear fuel with lower enrichment of uranium (LEU) than the fuel currently used, which has a high enrichment of uranium (HEU). The study shows that the presence of fertile isotopes in LEU fuel, which increases the neutron resonance absorption, reduces the impact of transients on the fuel and enhances the negative reactivity feedback, thus, within the limitations of this study, making LEU fuel appear to be a safe alternative fuel for the reactor core.