Incredibility of a Postulated Criticality Event for Enriched Uranyl Nitrate Storage

At the H-Canyon outside facilities, highly enriched uranyl nitrate solutions collected from leaks or during deliberate maintenance activities is collected into 5-gallon polyethylene bottles. The current criticality safety evaluation for the facility postulates that a criticality event is possible if the solutions are allowed to concentrate through evaporation, freezing, storing multiple bottles in a geometrically unfavorable array, or any combination of these conditions. Using chemical data on uranyl nitrate freezing from Savannah River National Laboratory, protected limits on concentration and enrichment, and normal operational restrictions, criticality was shown to be incredible under all normal and credible abnormal conditions. A bounding normal solution is analyzed under normal conditions and shown to be substantially subcritical. A bounding credible abnormal solution is defined as 9.2 g U²³⁵/L and 73 wt. % enriched and 0 M excess nitric acid. The concentration and enrichment are limitations already protected by the facility for other processes. Because acidity is not specifically restricted, the most reactive lower bound is selected. The credible abnormal worst placement is in a concrete basin reflected on three sides. There the bottle(s) would be subject in the worst cases to flooding (full water reflection) and postulated concentration through evaporation or freezing. Computational modeling was performed using KENOVI in the SCALE 6.1 code package. (authors)