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INL makes first fuel for Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment
Idaho National Laboratory has announced the creation of the first batch of enriched uranium chloride fuel salt for the Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment (MCRE). INL said that its fuel production team delivered the first fuel salt batch at the end of September, and it intends to produce four additional batches by March 2026. MCRE will require a total of 72–75 batches of fuel salt for the reactor to go critical.
Edgar Kiefhaber
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 111 | Number 2 | June 1992 | Pages 197-204
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE92-A23933
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
For high-accuracy criticality calculations, one should take into account the difference in the energy distributions between prompt and delayed fission neutrons. In steady-state reactor calculations, it is usually assumed that delayed and prompt neutrons are emitted with the same energy distribution. This approximation may lead to systematic deviations in keffof between −0.2 and +0.05%. While for typical cores of liquid-metal-cooled fast reactors and corresponding critical assemblies the effect is usually fairly small, it may become more important for low-enriched k∞ experiments and for highly enriched, high-leakage cores. For group cross-section adjustment procedures usually covering a wide range of critical assemblies with fairly different nuclear characteristics, a proper treatment of the energy distributions of delayed neutrons could be particularly important for excluding systematic differences as far as possible.