This is Part A. / <p> Effects in 19 element CANDU fuel bundles containing ThO2 and UO2, located in thermonuclear reactor blankets, have been examined for a variety of blanket designs. The buildup in time of nuclides derived from Th232 by neutron capture was studied. The essential CTR (Controlled Thermonuclear Reactor) blanket features that were examined were tritium breeding in the blanket (the fusion reaction of interest was the DT reaction resulting in the production of a 14.1 MeV neutron and a 3.5 MeV alpha particle), neutron multiplication in the blanket and the U233 production. Means of optimizing these features were also examined. Some conclusions concerning the use and influence of the CANDU bundle are made.</p> <p> It is of interest to study the details of the buildup of U233 in the bundles with the view of perhaps transferring bundles directly from the CTR blanket into a core of a fission power reactor. As such, it would be necessary to convert approximately 3% of the initial thorium present to U233 before transferral. This report examines time steps over which this could be achieved and looks at the performance of the blanket as a whole when such changes occur. The production of unwanted radioactive isotopes is looked at with suggestions of how to minimize this production without harming the rest of the blanket's basic functions.</p> <p> Procedures outlined in the preliminary report "Bench-Mark Neutronic Calculations for Fusion Reactor Designs" by S.A. Kushneriuk and P.Y. Wong form a basis for all of the calculations made in this report. Based on the findings of that report, it is expected that values presented
here do reflect, to a fair degree of accuracy, conditions encountered in the CTR blankets studied.</p> / Thesis / Master of Engineering (MEngr)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/20220 |
| Date | January 1977 |
| Creators | Stone, Terry Wayne |
| Contributors | Kushneriuk, S. A., Engineering Physics |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
Page generated in 0.0023 seconds