Nuclear weapons are an ever-present danger which threatens our very existence, which is whymany call for total nuclear disarmament. To do this, we need to know how many nuclear bombsthere are in the world. However, to be sure that the true number is given, we must useapproximations and simulations to determine the nuclear capacity of a given country.Additionally, to know that these numbers are accurate, sensitivity studies are carried out.In this case, such a study was executed to measure the sensitivity of design and operationalparameters of three reactors: Ågesta, NRX, and CANDU, with respect to their plutoniumproduction and quality. The parameters of interest are power density, fuel temperature, fueldensity, fuel rod thickness, moderator temperature, moderator density, coolant temperature,coolant density, pitch, initial enrichment, and cycle length.The study relied on the simulation tool Serpent, which is a Monte-Carlo code for nuclearreactions. The parameters of interest were altered one at a time, usually by ±10% of theirnominal value, to see how the amount of plutonium changes, as well as its quality.The result showed that the power density and initial enrichment had the greatest impact onplutonium production, however, the biggest factor in terms of plutonium grade was the cyclelength. After just 30 days, the plutonium will decrease from weapon’s grade to reactor gradequality, which marks the clearest difference between how a reactor would be run for civilian orweapon purposes. Other parameters like fuel temperature and coolant temperature and densitydid not affect the plutonium in any significant fashion.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-504180 |
| Date | January 2023 |
| Creators | Hedberg, Isak, Fredriksson, Stina, Hallander, Axel |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för materialvetenskap |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | MATVET-F ; 23018 |
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