Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

 

Gadolinium particle depletion in light water reactor fuel rods Public Deposited

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https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/z029p801s

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  • Gadolinium is an important element to the Nuclear Fuel Industry. Two of the seven naturally occurring isotopes of gadolinium have very large absorption cross sections for thermal neutrons. The isotopes of ¹⁵⁵ Gd and ¹⁵⁷ Gd readily absorb thermal neutrons and transmute to ¹⁵⁶ Gd and ¹⁵⁸ Gd which are poor thermal neutron absorbers. Because of this property, gadolinium is termed a burnable neutron poison. At sufficient concentrations, gadolinia becomes a self-shielded absorber in that the neutron absorption event occurs very near the absorbing surface and the internal volume of the absorber sees little or no thermal neutron flux. The study of self-shielded burnable absorbers is not new to the Nuclear industry. However, most of the previous work in this area has concentrated on uniform mixtures of the gadolinium with the uranium in the fuel pellets. The present work employs simplified transport theory methods to calculate the depletion of gadolinia when small dense spherical particles are included along with the traditional uniform mixture. The complex interaction of the system geometry along with the absorption effects of the self-shielded gadolinia absorber are investigated.
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