New options of the RA reactor

Full text: During 1963 and 1964, comprehensive work was devoted to study of the new options for utilization of the RA reactor. Important theoretical results have been verified, and the reactor was operated at 11 MW power. Further increase of the reactor power was limited by testing the possibility to achieve maximum value of the neutron flux without additional investment and the existing state of the heavy water pumps. According to the preliminary calculation mean flux of 7.3 1013 n/cm2/s and maximum about 1014 was achieved at 10 MW power. Maximum flux achieved at 15 MW power was about 1.5 1014 n/cm2/s. The experiments have shown that the RA reactor can operate at 15 MW power under certain conditions. During the major part of the year, under similar favourable conditions, and increase of cooling conditions (Q=250 m3/h) the reactor can operate safely at nominal and even somewhat higher power. In addition to the diagrams obtained from the previous experiments which enable fast determination of the favourable operating conditions, further experiments are needed to achieve thermal stabilization at higher power levels. Only after this final conclusion would be drawn about the reactor options