Abstract:
The Chilean Nuclear Energy Commission has initiated studies to produce fission Mo-99 by the irradiation of a low enrichment uranium target at RECH-1 reactor, thanks to the IAEA Coordinated Research Project (CRP) “Developing Techniques for Small Scale Indigenous Molybdenum 99 Production using LEU Fission or Neutron Activation”, supported by ANL, USA. This target is made of a foil of 13 gram LEU metallic uranium inserted between two concentric aluminium cylinders.
Results for the neutronic and activity calculations are presented. A criticality safety analysis for the storage of the originating radioactive wastes of the process was performed using MCNP code. The neutronic calculations were carried out for the present core configuration of RECH-1 reactor using WIMS and CITATION codes. Reactivity change due to target loading has been examined to confirm the reactor safety. With the target power, the fission product activities have been calculated using ORIGEN-S code from the SCALE-4.4a system, taking into account different irradiation and decay times. At the end of the irradiation, the LEU foil target will be allowed to decay in the reactor pool.