Core performance and proliferation resistance prospective of a novel natural uranium fueled, heavy water moderated nuclear research reactor

Reduced feed and discharge inventory strategy and proliferation resistance in natural uranium fueled research reactors

“…The transport theory lattice simulation code WIMSeD/4 (Halsall, 1980;Aslam and Ahmad, 2002;Khan et al, 2004;Ahmad et al, 2004) with 1981 WIMSD library was used to calculate the infinite multiplication factor (k N ) of the cores and also used to generate the microscopic group constants for 3-D reactor core simulations using the diffusion theory code CITATION (Fowler et al, 1971). The description of the cell and the core modeling and five broad neutron energy groups, used in this study, can be found in our recently published work (Khan et al, 2004(Khan et al, , 2006. The description of compact core-1 and NRX/CIR type core can also be found elsewhere (Khan et al, 2004(Khan et al, , 2005(Khan et al, , 2006Larson, 1961;AECL, 1960).…”

“…The description of the cell and the core modeling and five broad neutron energy groups, used in this study, can be found in our recently published work (Khan et al, 2004(Khan et al, , 2006. The description of compact core-1 and NRX/CIR type core can also be found elsewhere (Khan et al, 2004(Khan et al, , 2005(Khan et al, , 2006Larson, 1961;AECL, 1960). A comparison of the various fuel rod/core parameters assumed for NRX/CIR, compact core-1 and compact core-2 is given in Table 1.…”

“…The proliferation risk associated with back-end of the fuel cycle, or more specifically with plutonium, can be minimized by properly selecting the aforesaid reactor design parameter for this purpose (Khan et al, 2004(Khan et al, , 2005(Khan et al, , 2006Xu, 2003). Plutonium is produced by virtue of neutron absorption and transmutation in 238 U.…”

“…In our previous work (Khan et al, 2004(Khan et al, , 2005(Khan et al, , 2006, besides other analyses, we studied the effect of coolants (H 2 O and D 2 O) on proliferation resistance of natural uranium fueled, heavy water moderated reactors similar in design to those of National Experimental Reactor (NRX) developed by Canadians (Lewis, 1956;Larson, 1961;IAEA-TECDOC-324, 1985) and Canadian Indian Reactor (CIR) developed jointly by Canadians and Indians (AECL, 1960). Using the idea of replacement of light water coolant with heavy water in NRX/CIR type reactor, a core with reduced size, having almost half of fuel rods as compared to NRX/CIR, was proposed.…”

“…In previous studies (Khan et al, 2004(Khan et al, , 2005(Khan et al, , 2006, we adopted the approach by reducing the core size in radial direction while keeping the fuel rod radius fixed. In this study, for the enhancement of proliferation resistance capability of the compact core fueled with natural uranium, the reduced feed and discharge fuel inventory strategy was employed in an alternate way by reducing the fuel rod radius and keeping the number of fuel rods and core dimensions fixed.…”