NEUTRONICS ANALYSES OF DISPERSION FUELS FOR CORE CONVERSION OF NIRR-1
NEUTRONICS ANALYSES OF DISPERSION FUELS FOR CORE CONVERSION OF NIRR-1
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Date
2018-07
Authors
IBIKUNLE, Isaac Kolawole
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Abstract
The modification of Miniature Neutron Source Reactor (MNSR) facilities from 90%
HEU cores to below 20% LEU systems as part of the on-going worldwide effort of
converting Research Reactors from highly enriched uranium (HEU) cores to low
enriched uranium (LEU) cores under the auspices of Reduced Enrichment for Research
and Test Reactors (RERTR) program. In this work, neutronics feasibility studies of
three dispersion fuels have been performed using the Monte Carlo N-Particle Transport
(MCNP) code to determine their suitability for the conversion of Nigeria Research
Reactor-1 (NIRR-1) from HEU (>90%) to LEU (<20%) fuel. The potential LEU
dispersion fuels investigated in this work include U3Si, U3Si2, and U9Mo, each enriched
to 19.75%. The following reactor core physics parameters were computed for the LEU
fuel options; clean cold core excess reactivity (rex), control rod (CR) worth, shut down
margin (SDM), neutron flux distributions in the irradiation channels and kinetics data
(i.e. effective delayed neutron fraction, βeff and prompt neutron lifetime, lf ). Results are
compared with experimental and calculated data of the current HEU core and indicate
that it would be feasible to use any of the LEU fuel options for the conversion of
commercial MNSR in general and NIRR-1 in particular from HEU to LEU.
Description
A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE SCHOOL OF POSTGRADUATE
STUDIES, AHMADU BELLO UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT FOR
THE AWARD OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN PHYSICS
DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS
AHMADU BELLO UNIVERSITY
ZARIA, NIGERIA
Keywords
NEUTRONICS ANALYSES,, DISPERSION FUELS,, CORE CONVERSION,, NIRR-1