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AbstractAbstract
[en] The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission contracted with the General Electric Company to design, construct, and operate the Southwest Experimental Fast Oxide Reactor (SEFOR) to measure the Doppler effect for fast neutron breeder reactors. It contracted with Nuclear Fuel Services to fabricate the fuel rods for the reactor. When the reactor went critical in May, 1969, it appeared that some of the mixed uranium-plutonium oxide (MOX) fuel rods did not contain the specified quantity of plutonium. The SEFOR operators soon found several fuel rods which appeared to be low in plutonium. The safeguards group at Brookhaven was asked to look into the problem and, if possible, determine how much plutonium was missing from the unirradiated rods and from the larger number which had been slightly irradiated in the reactor. It was decided that the plutonium content of the unirradiated and irradiated rods could be measured relative to a reference rod using a high resolution gamma-ray detector and also by neutron measurements using an auto-correlation circuit recently developed at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). During the next two years, Brookhaven personnel and C.V. Strain of NRL made several trips to the SEFOR reactor. About 250 of the 775 rods were measured by two or more methods, using a sodium-iodide detector, a high-resolution germanium detector, a neutron detector, or the reactor (to measure reactivity). The research team concluded that 4.6 ± 0.46 kg of plutonium was missing out of the 433 kg that the rods should have contained. This report describes the SEFOR experiment and the procedures used to determine the material unaccounted for, or MUF
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7 Nov 1994; 20 p; CONTRACT AC02-76CH00016; Also available from OSTI as DE95005653; NTIS; US Govt. Printing Office Dep
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ACTINIDES, ELEMENTS, EPITHERMAL REACTORS, EXPERIMENTAL REACTORS, FAST REACTORS, FUEL ELEMENTS, LIQUID METAL COOLED REACTORS, MANAGEMENT, MATERIALS TESTING, METALS, PLUTONIUM REACTORS, POWER REACTORS, REACTOR COMPONENTS, REACTORS, RESEARCH AND TEST REACTORS, SODIUM COOLED REACTORS, TESTING, TRANSURANIUM ELEMENTS
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