Progress on Reactor Kinetics Measurements in ZED-2

Abstract

The zero-power, D₂O-moderated reactor ZED-2 is currently being used to perform reactor kinetics experiments on mixed oxide (MOX) fuels. These experiments can be used to provide data on the kinetics parameters of cores containing nuclides such as ²³⁵U, ²³³U, and ²³⁹Pu. This extended abstract presents the ongoing transient measurements in ZED-2 being used to calculate the “in-core” delayed neutron parameters: the effective delayed neutron fractions Β_eff,i by precursor group. This is strongly tied to validation of computationally-determined delayed neutron parameters.