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Dallas, TX|Hilton Anatole
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Breaking ground on a new approach to construction
The drive to Kairos Power’s reactor demonstration site in Oak Ridge, Tenn., is not only scenic—it’s historic. Nearly 85 years ago, roughly 30,000 construction workers transformed orchards and farmland into a key Manhattan Project site. Depending on your route, you may pass by one of the three gatehouses that were once military checkpoints controlling access to Atomic Energy Commission production facilities.
W. A. Reardon, D. E. Christensen
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 30 | Number 2 | November 1967 | Pages 222-232
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE67-A17333
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The graded exposure of 4 plutonium-aluminum alloy, 19-rod clustered fuel elements, and the subsequent destructive sampling of the elements have provided experimental data showing the variation of plutonium isotopes with irradiation. Irradiations were conducted in the heavy-water-moderated and -cooled Plutonium Recycle Test Reactor at Pacific Northwest Laboratory of the Battelle Memorial Institute. Using 137Cs as a fission indicator, the depletion of the initial plutonium to 50.4 ± 1.1% is determined. Reactor effective cross-section ratios for the plutonium isotopes are derived from the data, and results show that the capture-to-fission cross-section ratio for 239Pu (239) is 0.426 ± 0.019.