Open AccessAnalysis of Uranyl Nitrate Hexahydrate composition for optimum neutron multiplication factor of SAMOP
Author(s) -
Puradwi Ismu Wahyono,
S. Syarip
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of physics. conference series
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.21
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1742-6596
pISSN - 1742-6588
DOI - 10.1088/1742-6596/1402/4/044071
Subject(s) - uranyl nitrate , uranyl , uranium , molybdenum , composition (language) , neutron , chemistry , nuclear chemistry , analytical chemistry (journal) , radiochemistry , materials science , inorganic chemistry , physics , nuclear physics , metallurgy , environmental chemistry , linguistics , philosophy
Subcritical Assembly for Molybdenum Production (SAMOP) is a concept of nuclear reactor where the neutron multiplication factor (k eff ) less than one (k eff ∼ 0.99). Therefore, SAMOP reactor need an external neutron source for its operation. Uranyl Nitrate Hexahydrate, UO 2 (NO 3 ) 2 or UN is used as fuel as well as target material for 99 Mo production. The 99 Mo isotope is used to generate 99m Tc which is the most widely used radioisotopes for diagnostic in nuclear medical fields. The composition of Uranyl Nitrate Hexahydrate (UNH) should be analyzed to achieve the required subcritical level in the SAMOP core i.e. k-eff ∼ 0.99. Methodology for this analysis is an elemental composition calculation of UNH, with enrichment of uranium of 19.75% and 2.81 gr/cc of density. The analysis result shows that the elemental composition of 235 U, 238 U, N, O, and H, are 4.9715%, 20.2009%, 5.3448%, 37.4138%, and 32.069% respectively, and therefore, the composition of U and N-O-H are 25.1724%, and 74.8276% respectively. The composition is then used as input for the neutronic analysis using the WIMS-D/4 computer code for k eff calculation of SAMOP. The result shows that the optimum k eff of 0.99 is achieved with the above elemental compositions.