Abstracts and Available Papers Presented at the
2000 International RERTR Meeting

A NEUTRONIC FEASIBILITY STUDY FOR LEU CONVERSION
OF THE SAFARI-1 REACTOR

R. B. Pond, N. A. Hanan and J. E. Matos
Argonne National Laboratory
Argonne, Illinois, USA

G. Ball
NECSA
Pretoria, South Africa

ABSTRACT

A neutronic feasibility study to convert the SAFARI-1 reactor from HEU to LEU fuel was performed at Argonne National Laboratory in cooperation with NECSA. Comparisons were made of the reactor performance with the current 90% enriched HEU fuel type (UAl) and two 19.75% enriched LEU fuel types (U₃Si₂ and U7Mo).The thermal fluxes with the LEU fuels were 3 - 9% lower than with the current HEU fuel. For the same fuel assembly design, a uranium density of approximately 4.5 g/cm³ was required with U₃Si₂-Al fuel and a uranium density of about 4.6 g/cm³ was required with U7Mo-Al fuel to match the 24.6-day cycle of the UAl-alloy fuel with 0.92 gU/cm³. The selection of a suitable LEU fuel and the decision to convert SAFARI-1 will be an economic matter that depends upon the fuel type, fuel assembly design, experiment performance and fuel cycle costs.

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