Reactor Physics Measurements in Support of Advanced Fuel Cycles in CANDU Reactors

Abstract

Reactor physics data and calculational methods can be checked against integral measurements performed in "zero-energy" critical facilities such as the ZED-2 reactor at CRNL. This has been done for several advanced fuels --(Pu,U)O₂, (Pu,Th)O₂ and (²³³U,Th)O₂-- that are of interest in proposed fuel cycles in the CANDU^* reactor. Since insufficient quantities of these fuels were available to assemble critical cores containing only the fuel of interest, methods of measurement and analysis for mixed fuel cores have had to be devised. The measurements reported here were made with the (Pu,U)O₂₂ fuel and include both reactivity worths and reaction-rate distributions. Comparisons with calculations using the cell code WIMS-AECL and the reactor-core code CONIFERS are generally satisfactory.