DEVELOPMENT OF HODOSCOPE-REACTOR CORE MODEL FOR TREAT TRANSIENT TESTING

摘要

From the initiation of operations in 1959, the Transient Reactor Test (TREAT) facility at Idaho National Laboratories possessed the potential to serve as the foremost transient testing site in the world. From 1959 to 1994, thousands of tests were conducted to investigate fission heating of test fuel, non-destructive test data through fuel radiography, and test fuels under severe criticality conditions. However, experiments have not been conducted since 1994. A resurging interest in fuel-motion testing has ignited new interest in the facility. Even after nearly 20 years, the return to operable conditions and resumption of testing at TREAT is believed to be feasible by the Department of Energy (DOE). As the facility prepares to resume testing, systematic and safety checks are being preformed to ensure the optimization of the facility. With advancements in modeling and simulation techniques since 1994, core and neutronics modeling serve as the initial inquiry to the capacitive state of the TREAT facility. In preparation of testing resumption, models have been constructed to simulate the last documented experiments. Within these models is the need to develop of an interfacial model providing continuity between the reactor core neutronics models and the hodoscope fuel-mass surveillance. This study details the construction of such hodoscope interface models through development of the north-viewing slot of TREAT, described as the transient gap. This model will be utilized in conjunction with developed hodoscope models to simulate fuel motion modeling, investigate Doppler broadening on inserted test vehicles, and develop a reactor response function for neutron behavior within TREAT.