Abstracts and Available Papers Presented at the
2004 International RERTR Meeting
PERFORMANCE OF PARR-1 WITH LEU FUEL
S. Pervez, M. Latif, I.H. Bokhari and S.Bakhtyar
Nuclear Engineering Division
PINSTECH, P.O. Nilore, Islamabad – Pakistan
ABSTRACT
Pakistan Research Reactor (PARR-1) went critical in 1965 with HEU fuel. The reactor core was converted to LEU fuel with power upgradation from 5 MW to 10 MW in 1992. The reactor has been operated with LEU fuel for about 10,000 hours and has produced about 66,000 MWh energy up to now. Average burn up of the irradiated fuel is about 42 %. The fuel performance during the last 12 years has been excellent. Post irradiation visual inspection of the fuel has revealed no abnormality. During operation there have been no signs of releases in the pool water establishing the full integrity of this fuel. The reactor has been mainly utilized for radioisotope production, beam tube experiments including neutron diffraction studies, neutron radiography etc. Studies have been completed to operate the reactor with a mixed core (HEU + LEU) to utilize the less burned HEU fuel elements. A major project of production of fission Moly using PARR-1 is in the final stages.
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Contact:
Dr. Jordi Roglans-Ribas
Technical Director, RERTR Department
Nuclear Engineering Division – 362
Argonne National Laboratory
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