Publications

The following SNL document contains requested forms related to used equipment, as part of the documentation for the MLU shipment that was performed by the LANL MLU team and Crane Services personnel.

Abstract not provided.

The Sandia Critical Experiments (SCX) Program provides a specialized facility for performing water moderated and reflected critical experiments with UO₂ fuel rod arrays. A history of safe reactor operations and flexibility in reactor core configuration has resulted in the completion of several benchmark critical experiment evaluations that are published in the International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP) Handbook. The LEUCOMP-THERM-078 and LEU-COMP-THERM-080 evaluations from the handbook provide similar cases for reference. The set of experiments described here were performed using the Seven Percent Critical Experiment (7uPCX) fuel to measure the effects of decreasing the fuel-to-water volume ratio on the critical array size. This was accomplished by using fuel loading patterns to effectively increase the pitch of the fuel arrays in the assembly. The fuel rod pitch variations provided assembly configurations that ranged from strongly undermoderated to slightly overmoderated.

Abstract not provided.