Proliferation Resistance Assessment of Aqueous Homogeneous Solution Reactor for Medical Isotope Production

摘要

Aqueous homogeneous reactor (AHR) has several benefits to be used to produce medicalisotopes such as ~(99)Mo, ~(90)Sr, ~(131)I and other fission products. Isotopes as fission products can bedirect extracted from the fuel solution after several days of operation. Otherwise AHR hasinherent safety characteristics with very large negative reactivity feedback. Assessment in thiswork was conducted on the AHR with uranyl nitrate solution type AHR with enrichment19.75% (LEU). Several fissile materials produced by the end of cycle (EOC) were calculatedusing deterministic method and Monte Carlo Method. The calculation results are used toevaluate the grade of proliferation resistance. The results show, that the consumption of ~(235)U bysmall burnup power 50 kW is 0.0167% per week. The buildup of plutonium increasesproportionally to the burnup time. Total of plutonium buildup in 4 weeks operation is 0.102 gbelow the significant quantity defined by IAEA. The use of small AHR strengthened byadvanced safeguards technologies may improve the proliferation resistance in medical isotopeproduction.