The Parallex Project: CANDU MOX Fuel Testing with Weapons Derived Plutonium

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Parallex Project consists of a parallel experiment in which weapons-derived plutonium (WPu) from the United States and from the Russian Federation will be tested as mixed-oxide (MOX) CANDU@ fuel in the National Research Universal (NRU) reactor at the Chalk River Laboratories in Canada. Plutonium derived from excess weapons will be fabricated into CANDU MOX fuel at the A.A. Bochvar Institute in Moscow and at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the United States. The MOX fuel will be transported to CRL, where it will be characterized, assembled into fuel bundles and then irradiated in the NRU reactor. Following irradiation, the fuel will be examined in hot cells to assess its irradiation performance. This paper describes the scope, rationale and current status of the Parallex Project.