Fuel qualification timelines for new fuel technology under ideal conditions can take between 20-25 years to be fully qualified from initial concept to deployment as full fuel assemblies. To reduce the timeline and costs, new separate-effects test and integral-effects test experiments, advanced instrumentation, and advanced modeling and simulation tools are...
Control rod calibration experiment results for the Oregon State TRIGA® Reactor (OSTR) immediately following LEU conversion in 2008, and MCNP® 5 predicted rod worths from the 2008 LEU Conversion Safety Analysis Report (CSAR) are discussed. The reactivity worth of the four OSTR control rods are measured using the rod-pull method....
The testing of nuclear fuel under reactivity-initiated accident (RIA) conditions is paramount for the better understanding of the fuel’s behavior during these transient accident events. The Transient Reactor Test (TREAT) facility is a nuclear reactor that will be capable of recreating the thermal-hydraulic and neutronic boundary conditions representative of RIA...
A novel high temperature thermal instrument is proposed, which utilizes a dual-sensing platinum resistor encased in a mono-crystalline alpha-alumina (sapphire) substrate. The instrument is comprised of four platinum trace elements, oriented with 90° rotational symmetry atop a 1120 oriented crystal lattice substrate. All four of these sensors measure temperature directly...
This thesis presents a feasibility study of a thorium fueled thermal spectrum breeder-burner reactor that operates without chemical reprocessing. Materials were evaluated for their potential as moderators using standard analytical methods. These materials were then used as moderators to evaluate criticality and enrichment in an infinite fuel pin lattice. The...
The atmospheric detection of four radioxenon isotopes (131mXe, 133mXe, 133Xe, and 135Xe) released during a nuclear detonation is a key tool utilized by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) to identify clandestine nuclear weapon testing activity. These radioxenon isotopes all decay via the near-simultaneous release of an electron and a...
We present a deterministic spectral method to predict equilibrium temperature distributions, heat flux, and thermal conductivity in homogeneous and heterogeneous media. We solve the Boltzmann transport equation in a second order spatial, self-adjoint angular flux formulation. We implemented this method into the radiation transport code Rattlesnake, built using the MOOSE...
The Transient Reactor Test facility (TREAT) at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is a unique reactor capable of stressing test fuel during a power pulse transient. TREAT fuel is composed of high enriched uranium (HEU) heterogeneous fuel; microscopic UO₂ fuel grains with an average radius of 10 μm are randomly distributed...
The fundamental physics of turbulence in plasma is not well understood. Recent studies of the plasma deflagration accelerator in the High Temperature Gasdynamics Lab at Stanford University have demonstrated the presence of small scale instabilities that limit the lifetime of the jet/Z pinch and are not reproduced by coaxial plasma...
A computer code capable of modeling the burnup dependent static behavior
of a boiling water reactor was developed. The code calculates
three-dimensional quarter core power distributions using a simulated
two-group diffusion theory model. Thermal-hydraulic calculations account
for the interaction between power, coolant flow, and void fraction
distributions. Cross sections are...