Study of neutron fluxes before and after the change HEU to LEU fuel for TRIGA Mark III reactor of Mexico

摘要

In the operation of the TRIGA Mark III reactor, is very important to know the neutron flux profile to perform tasks such as radioisotope production, research on neutron physics, burning fuel and neutron dosimetry. With neutron profile we can also calculate the average flow in the reactor core, which is directly proportional to the reactor power. In this work, due to the conversion of fuel from LEU to HEU, the new profiles of neutron flux are shown and compared with the previous values of fluxes with the mixed core. It is explained how we to carry out the measurements (in various irradiation facilities of the reactor core) of the subcadmic neutron flux with energies less than 0.4 eV (the cutoff energy of cadmium is about 0.4 eV), and the epicadmic flux with higher energies than 0.4 eV. The distributions of radial and axial fluxes were determinated, the power factor per ring also were calculated.