Uranium and Thorium Loadings Determined by Chemical and Nondestructive Methods in HTGR Fuel Rods for the Fort St. Vrain Early Validation Irradiation Experiment

摘要

The Fort St. Vrain Early Validation Irradiation Experiment is an irradiation test of reference and of improved High-Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor fuels in the Fort St. Vrain Reactor. The irradiation test includes fuel rods fabricated at ORNL on an engineering scale fuel rod molding machine. Fuel rods were nondestructively assayed for exp 235 U content by a technique based on the detection of prompt-fission neutrons induced by thermal-neutron interrogation and were later chemically assayed by using the modified Davies Gray potentiometric titration method. The chemical analysis of the thorium content was determined by a volumetric titration method. The chemical assay method for uranium was evaluated and the results from the as-molded fuel rods agree with those from: (1) large samples of Triso-coated fissile particles, (2) physical mixtures of the three particle types, and (3) standard solutions to within 0.05%. Standard fuel rods were fabricated in order to evaluate and calibrate the nondestructive assay device. The agreement of the results from calibration methods was within 0.6%. The precision of the nondestructive assay device was established as approximately 0.6% by repeated measurements of standard rods. The precision was comparable to that estimated by Poisson statistics. A relative difference of 0.77 to 1.5% was found between the nondestructive and chemical determinations on the reactor grade fuel rods. (ERA citation 04:022820)