Axial Blanket Fuel Design and Demonstration. Fourth Progress Report, April 1982-March 1983

摘要

The Babcock and Wilcock Company and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District under the direction of the United States Department of Energy are participating in an axial blanket fuel demonstration program as part of a national effort to improve uranium utilization in light water reactors. The goal of the program is to design and irradiate an entire core of axial blanket fuel assemblies in a commercial pressurized water reactor. This report, covering April 1982 through March 1983, is the fourth progress report for the program. A major milestone was attained in this timeframe with the completion of the first cycle of irradiation of four axial blanket lead test assemblies in the Rancho Seco cycle 5 core on February 17, 1983. The axial power characteristics of both an axial blanket lead test assembly and a symmetric standard (non-blanketed) assembly were monitored by a movable in-core detector system. This detector system provided measured data to bench mark core physics models. The measured powers obtained from this system and the on-line computer agreed well with those predicted by the models. (ERA citation 09:002216)