PU-MET-MIX-002, TEX Pu Baseline Assemblies

Citations Over Time

Abstract

This report documents the plutonium baseline experimental critical configurations for the United States Nuclear Criticality Safety Program’s Thermal/Epithermal eXperiments (TEX) program. Five TEX experiments (Experiments 1-5) were designed to establish baseline configurations with plutonium/aluminum metal alloy Zero Power Physics Reactor (ZPPR) Plutonium-Aluminum No-Nickel (PANN) plates covering five different fission energy regimes, with varying fractions of thermal, intermediate, and fast fissions. All five experiments are acceptable as benchmarks. As the neutron spectra of the five experiments differed, Case 1 is cross listed as PU-MET-FAST-048 and Cases 4 and 5 are cross listed as PU-MET-THERM-002. For all five experiments, the ZPPR plates were arranged on trays in layers of 24 plates (6 plates by 4 plates), resulting in approximately a 30 cm by 30 cm footprint. Multiple layers were stacked together with varying thicknesses of interspersed polyethylene placed between the layers to tune the neutron spectrum of the assembly. The experiments were completed in multiple campaigns over 2017 and 2018 at the National Criticality Experiments Research Center (NCERC) at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS).

Related Papers

• → Stability of plutonium(IV) and plutonium(VI) in nitric acid solutions under strong α-irradiation(1979)3 cited
• → Potentiometric determination of plutonium by sodium bismuthate oxidation(1984)6 cited
• → Oak Ridge TNS Program: system description manual(1979)5 cited
• → Test plan for demonstrating plutonium extraction from 10-L solutions using EIChrom extraction chromatographic resins(1994)1 cited
• → Methods of assaying for plutonium in biological materials(1948)