The new area monitoring system and the fuel database of the TRIGA Mark II reactor in Vienna

The 250 kW TRIGA Mark-II reactor operates since March 1962 at the Atominstitut, Vienna, Austria. Its main tasks are nuclear education and training in the fields of neutron- and solid state physics, nuclear technology, reactor safety, radiochemistry, radiation protection and dosimetry, and low temperature physics and fusion research. Academic research is carried out by students in the above mentioned fields coordinated and supervised by about 70 staff members with the aim of a masters- or PhD degree in one of the above mentioned areas. After 25 years of successful operation, it was necessary to exchange the old area monitoring system with a new digital one. The purpose of the new system is the permanent control of the reactor hall, the primary and secondary cooling system and the monitoring of the ventilation system. The paper describes the development and implementation of the new area monitoring system. The second topic in this paper describes the development of the new fuel database. Since March 7th, 1962, the TRIGA Mark II reactor Vienna operates with an average of 263 MWh per year, which corresponds to a uranium burn-up of 13.7 g per year. Presently we have 81 TRIGA fuel elements in the core, 55 of them are old aluminium clad elements from the initial criticality while the rest are stainless steel clad elements which had been added later to compensate the uranium consumption. Because 67 % of the elements are older than 40 years, it was necessary to put the history of every element in a database, to get an easy access to all the relevant data for every element in our facility. (author)