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DOE, General Matter team up for new fuel mission at Hanford
The Department of Energy's Office of Environmental Management (EM) on Tuesday announced a partnership with California-based nuclear fuel company General Matter for the potential use of the long-idle Fuels and Materials Examination Facility (FMEF) at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
According to the announcement, the DOE and General Matter have signed a lease to explore the FMEF's potential to be used for advanced nuclear fuel cycle technologies and materials, in part to help satisfy the predicted future requirements of artificial intelligence.
J. Ligou
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 63 | Number 1 | May 1977 | Pages 31-40
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE77-A27001
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
On the basis of a point kinetic model (adiabatic approximation), the explosion of fissionable pellets is analyzed. The needed kinetic parameters are derived from steady-state multigroup transport calculations. The effect of the reflectors is included not only in the critical mass determination but also in the kinetic behavior of the pellets through the effective lifetime. Although the hydrodynamic expansion is not considered, fuel burnup is taken into account to ascertain the time needed for maximum efficiency. This time is then compared to the disassembly time. A simple formalism is included that directly gives the microexplosion efficiency. Most of the numerical results are related to Li-D-reflected plutonium pellets. The ignition of the fission chain reactions is provided by fusion neutrons produced in the reflector, but the bootstrap mechanism between fission and fusion is not included.