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Sandia 7uPCX critical experiments exploring the effects of fuel-to-water ratio variations

Transactions of the American Nuclear Society

Laros, James H.; Harms, Gary A.; Campbell, Rafe C.; Hanson, Christina B.

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.

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TYPE Conference Paper YEAR 2021
DOIOSTIScopus

Results of partially-reflected critical experiments in square-pitched arrays of water-moderated 6.9 percent enriched fuel rods

Transactions of the American Nuclear Society

Harms, Gary A.; Ford, John T.; Campbell, Rafe C.

The Seven Percent Critical Experiment (7uPCX) was designed to provide benchmark criticality and reactor physics data for water-moderated pin-fueled nuclear reactor cores. The enrichment of the fuel was chosen to explore the enrichment range above the current 5% ceiling for US commercial pressurized water reactors. The experiment was part of the US Department of Energy (DOE) Nuclear Energy Research Initiative (NERI) Project 01-124 titled “Reactor Physics and Criticality Benchmark Evaluations for Advanced Nuclear Fuel”. The NERI project was a collaboration between AREVA Federal Services, LLC; the University of Florida; Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and Sandia National Laboratories (SNL). The experiments at Sandia are currently supported by the DOE National Nuclear Security Administration Nuclear Criticality Safety Program. Two sets of benchmark experiments have been completed and documented as LEU-COMP-THERM-080 and LEU-COMP-THERM-078. Those experiments were done with the number of fuel rods in the fully-reflected array as the approach parameter. The experiments reported here are similar to those in LEU-COMP-THERM-080 except that the arrays are partially-reflected – the arrays were larger than would be possible with full reflection and the approach-to-critical experiments were done with the depth of the water in the critical assembly as the approach parameter. These experiments are reported as LEU-COMP-THERM-096.

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TYPE Conference Poster YEAR 2015
OSTIScopus

Experiments with partially-reflected square-pitched arrays of water-moderated 6.9 percent enriched UO2 fuel rods

ICNC 2015 - International Conference on Nuclear Criticality Safety

Harms, Gary A.; Miller, Allison D.; Ford, John T.; Campbell, Rafe C.

The Seven Percent Critical Experiment (7uPCX) at Sandia National Laboratories was designed to provide benchmark criticality and reactor physics data for water-moderated pin-fueled nuclear reactor cores in the 5 to 10 percent enrichment range. Approach-to-critical experiments were performed on nineteen partially-reflected arrays of pure water-moderated and -reflected fuel rods with a fuel-to-water volume ratio of 0.67. Those configurations are described and the results of the measurements are reported in this paper.

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TYPE Conference Poster YEAR 2015
OSTIScopus
17 Results
17 Results