Development of Irradiation Test Devices for Transient Testing

AbstractThe Transient Reactor Test facility (TREAT) resumed operations in 2017 in order to reclaim its crucial role in nuclear-heated fuel safety research. TREAT’s historic era of operation (1959 to 1994) was best known for integral-scale testing of large fuel specimens/bundles under postulated reactor plant accident conditions, but TREAT also supported smaller-scale phenomena identification tests that elucidated fundamental behaviors and paved the way for these integral-scale tests. Advances in modern computational capabilities and a resurgence of interest in novel reactor technologies have created an opportunity for emphasizing modernized science-based and separate effects tests once again at TREAT. An innovative approach to this type of testing has been developed to leverage minor radioactivity built in during brief TREAT irradiations by arranging smaller fuel specimens in low-activation hardware so that they can be easily extracted and shipped for postirradiation examination within weeks. This recentl...