Proliferation resistance potential and burnup characteristics of an equilibrium core of novel natural uranium fueled nuclear research reactor

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

“…The coolant D 2 O and enhanced moderation in compact core and core geometry itself may result in change of neutron spectrum, which in turn may affect the plutonium production. The study presented in this article augments our earlier investigations (Khan et al, 2005) and contains the detail burnup analysis to explore the performance and proliferation resistance capacity of the proposed core compared to NRX/CIR. Section 2 of the article contains the description of the core designed and that of the simulation tools, the methodology adopted for cross-sections generation and core calculations.…”

“…The approach to equilibrium cycle: (a) variation of the BOC average fuel burnup; (b) variation of the BOC k eff of compact and NRX/CIR core(Khan et al, 2005).…”

“…Core excess reactivity as a function of effective full power days (EFPDs) of compact and NRX/CIR equilibrium cores at operating conditions(Khan et al, 2005).…”

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

“…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.…”