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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Surplus plutonium for power reactor fuel: What’s on offer
The Department of Energy has a plan for private companies to “dispose of surplus plutonium”—about 19.7 metric tons in both oxide and metal forms—by “making the materials available for advanced nuclear technologies.” A Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program request for applications (RFA) issued October 21 describes the plutonium on offer, and the “thresholds” prospective applicants must meet.
Grover Tuck, Harold E. Clark
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 40 | Number 3 | June 1970 | Pages 407-413
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE70-A20192
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Critical parameters are reported for uranium-solution systems consisting of equally spaced vertical cylinders arranged in a square array resting on the bottom of a 20.3-cm-high square slab tank. Some of these systems were reflected externally. Both the cylinders and the slab contained uranyl-nitrate solution having 490 g of uranium (93.2 wt% 235U)/liter. A system of an 87-cm-high array of sixteen 11.0-cm-diam cylinders on an 11.4-cm-thick solution slab was critical. The slab alone was critical at 12.8 cm. Another critical system was a single 22.4-cm-diam cylinder of effectively infinite height on a solution slab 10.8-cm thick. The 22.4-cm diameter is 93.7% of the critical diameter for an infinite cylinder. Monte Carlo calculations, simulating several typical experimental critical systems, yielded values for keff between 0.958 ± 0.012 and 0.986 ± 0.009.