This document is subject to formal change control, audit, and recall; therefore, it should be carefully maintained and kept readily available. The holder identified above is responsible for maintaining this document in an up-to-date conditioning by incorporating subsequent revisions as they become available. This document is property of DOE-EM. On request, reassignment that ends the need for the document, or termination of employment with the DOE-EM, this document must be returned to the NSNF Document Control Coordinator at the following address: ABSTRACT DOE-owned spent nuclear fuels encompass many fuel types. In an effort to facilitate criticality analysis for these various fuel types, they were categorized into eight characteristic fuel groups with emphasis on fuel matrix composition. Out of each fuel group, a representative fuel type was chosen for analysis as a bounding case within that fuel group. Generally, burnup data, fissile enrichments and total fuel mass govern the selection of the representative or candidate fuel within that group.For the HTGR group, the Fort Saint Vrain (FSV) reactor fuel has been chosen for the evaluation of viability for waste co-disposal. The FSV reactor was operated by Public Service of Colorado as a licensed power reactor. The FSV fuel employs a U/Th carbide matrix in individually pyrolytic carbon-coated particles. These individual particles are in turn coated with silicon carbide (SiC) and contained within fuel compacts, that are in turn embedded in graphite blocks that comprised the structural core of the reactor.
TERMS AND ACRONYMS Termsburnup -is a measure of the amount of fissile material consumed before the fuel element is removed from the reactor converter reactor -a nuclear reactor which yields (on an atom-for-atom basis) nearly as many new fissile atoms in a breeding cycle as are fissioned in the reactor.fertile -material, that after neutron capture(s) and decay, becomes fissionable fissile -materials which will undergo fission with neutrons of any energy
Acronyms / Abbreviations
Fort Saint Vrain High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor, FSVRThe AEC, now the Department of Energy (DOE), contracted with power companies and with Gulf General Atomics to jointly develop the commercial HTGR (High Temperature Gas Reactor). These HTGRs were based on the thorium fuel cycle in which fissile 233 U is produced from 232 Th 'fertile' material. Most of the stored carbide fuels came from two reactors, Peach Bottom 1 and Fort Saint Vrain (FSVR). A listing of graphite-based fuels is shown in Appendix A. All spent fuel discharged prior to December 31, 1988, is located at Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center (INTEC). Fuel removed from the FSVR core in 1989 and 1990 remains on-site at Ft. St. Vrain in temporary storage.The Fort Saint Vrain HTGR (located in Platteville, Colorado) operated under a NRC license from 1974 to 1989, and was the nation's only commercial reactor of this type. The coolant gas was helium. The reactor had a rated power of 842 MW(t), but ran well below that r...
