Power Burst Facility: U(18)O2-CaO-ZrO2 Fuel Rods in Water

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Abstract

The Power Burst Facility (PBF) reactor operated from 1972 to 1985 on the SPERT Area I of the Idaho National Laboratory, then known as Nuclear Reactor Test Station. PBF was designed to provide experimental data to aid in defining thresholds for and modes of failure under postulated accident conditions. PBF reactor startup testing began in 1972. This evaluation focuses on two operational loading tests, chronologically numbered 1 and 2, published in a startup-test report in 1974 [1]. Data for these tests was used by one of the authors to validate a MCNP model for criticality safety purposes [2]. Although specific references to original documents are kept in the text, all the reactor parameters and test specific data presented here was adapted from that report. The tests were performed with operational fuel loadings, a stainless steel in-pile tube (IPT) mockup, a neutron source, four pulse chambers, two fission chambers, and one ion chamber. The reactor's four transition rods (TRs) and control rods (CRs) were present but TR boron was completely withdrawn below the core and CR boron was partially withdrawn above the core. Test configurations differ primarily in the number of shim rods, and consequently the number of fuel rods included in the core. The critical condition was approached by incrementally and uniformly withdrawing CR boron from the core. Based on the analysis of the experimental data and numerical calculations, both experiments are considered acceptable as criticality safety benchmarks.

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