Abstracts and Available Papers Presented at the
2002 International RERTR Meeting

BURNUP MEASUREMENTS AT THE RECH-1 RESEARCH REACTOR

Carlos Henríquez, Gustavo Navarro, Claudio Pereda, Hugo Torres, Luis Peña, Juan Klein, Domingo Calderón

Unidad de Reactores, Reactor La Reina (RECH-1), Comisión Chilena de Energía Nuclear, Amunategui 95, Casilla 188-D, Santiago de Chile.

Abraham J. Kestelman

Laboratorio de Análisis por Activación Neutrónica, Centro Atómico Bariloche e Instituto Balseiro. 8400 Bariloche – Argentina

ABSTRACT

The Chilean Nuclear Energy Commission has decided to produce LEU fuel elements for the RECH-1 research reactor. During December 1998, the Fuel Fabrication Plant delivered the first four fuel elements, called leaders, to the RECH-1 reactor. The set was introduced into the reactor’s core, following the normal routine, but performing a special follow-up on their behavior inside and outside the core. In order to measure the burn-up of the leader fuel elements, it was decided to develop a burn-up measurements system to be installed into the RECH-1 reactor pool, and to decline the use of a similar system, which operates in a hot cell. The main reason to build this facility was to have the capability to measure the burn-up of fuel elements without waiting for long decay period. This paper gives a brief description of the facility to measure the burn-up of spent fuel elements installed into the reactor pool, showing the preliminary obtained spectra and briefly discussing them.

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