Abstract:
HANARO has been used for radioisotope production, material and fuel irradiation tests, beam application research and neutron activation analysis. In the initial stage of a normal operation, the usage time of the irradiation holes located in the core was less than 40% of the reactor operation day. To raise the number of users and utilization areas of the irradiation holes, equipments and facilities have been developed such as various capsules. Starting with the capsule containing MoO3 in 1999, the development of the capsule for an Ir-192 production contributed to the utilization of the irradiation holes in the core. Another area for increasing the utilization of HANARO was the fuel irradiation tests to develop new fuels. Various fuel tests have been performed. The major fuel tests were U3Si fuel produced by an atomization process, a rod type U-Mo fuel for a new research reactor fuel, U-Zr fuel, a large grained UO2 pellet developed for a high burn-up in KAERI. As a result of the steady efforts to improve HANARO’s utilization, the usage time of the irradiation holes is more than 90% of the reactor operation day.