Abstracts and Available Papers Presented at the
2002 International RERTR Meeting

CHARACTERIZATION OF BURNED FUEL OF THE TRIGA IPR – R1 RESEARCH REACTOR USING MONTEBURNS CODE

Hugo Moura Dalle^{1, 3}, Robert Jeraj²  and Elias B. Tambourgi³

¹Centro de Desenvolvimento da Tecnologia Nuclear – CDTN/CNEN
Caixa Postal 941 – Cidade Universitária – Pampulha
30123-970 – Belo Horizonte/MG - Brazil

²Jozef Stefan Institute
Jamova 39, 1000 Ljubljana
Ljubljana/Slovenia

³Faculdade de Engenharia Química - UNICAMP
Cidade Universitária "Zeferino Vaz"
Caixa Postal 6066 - CEP 13081-970 – Campinas/SP - Brazil

ABSTRACT

Monteburns is a completely automated computational tool that links the Monte Carlo code MCNP with the burnup and decay code Origen2.1. This code system was used to simulate the core of the CDTN’s TRIGA research reactor and nowadays is the current methodology used for the theoretical analysis of the main neutronic parameters of such reactor. Some results of the characterization of the burned fuel elements inside the core will be presented, including the mass of transuranic elements and of some fission products, the activity, heatload and radiotoxicities of the fuel. Furthermore, the core excess reactivity and control rods reactivity worth of the reactor after the power upgrading to 250 kW as well as the axial and spectral distribution of the neutron flux in the main irradiation devices were calculated.