ATR LEU Monolithic Foil- Type Fuel with Integral Cladding Burnable Absorber - Neutronics Performance Evaluation

The Advanced Test Reactor (ATR), currently operating in the United States, is used for material testing at very high neutron fluxes. Powered with highly enriched uranium (HEU), the ATR has a maximum thermal power rating of 250 MWth. Because of the large test volumes located in high flux areas, the ATR is an ideal candidate for assessing the feasibility of converting HEU driven reactor cores to low-enriched uranium (LEU) cores. The burnable absorber - 10B, was added in the inner and outer plates to reduce the initial excess reactivity, and to improve the peak ratio of the inner/outer heat flux. The present work investigates the LEU Monolithic foil-type fuel with 10B Integral Cladding Burnable Absorber (ICBA) design and evaluates the subsequent neutronics operating effects of this proposed fuel designs. The proposed LEU fuel specification in this work is directly related to both the RERTR LEU Development Program and the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) LEU Conversion Project at Idaho National Laboratory (INL).