Abstracts and Available Papers Presented at the
1998 International RERTR Meeting

A Neutronic Feasibility Study for LEU Conversion of the IR-8 Research Reactor

J. R. Deen, N. A. Hanan and J. E. Matos
Argonne National Laboratory
Argonne, IL, USA

and

P. Egorenkov and V. A. Nasonov
Russian Research Center 'Kurchatov Institute'
Moscow, Russia

Abstract

Equilibrium fuel cycle comparisons were made for HEU and LEU fuel options using three-dimensional multi-group diffusion theory models benchmarked to exact Monte Carlo models of the IR-8 core. Comparisons were made of changes in reactivity, cycle length, fuel burnup, thermal neutron flux for the 90% and 36% enriched IRT-3M fuel assembly and the 19.75% enriched IRT-4M fuel assembly with the same fuel management strategy. The results of these comparisons showed that a 3.48gU/cc fuel meat density would be required in the LEU IRT-4M fuel assembly to provide core reactivity equivalent to the reference HEU fuel cycle.