Reactivation of the Transient Reactor Test (TREAT) Facility Neutron Radiography Program

Reactivation of the Transient Reactor Test (TREAT) Facility Neutron Radiography Program

Shawn R. Jensen, Aaron E. Craft, Glen C. Papaioannou, Wyatt W. Empie, Blaine R. Ward

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Abstract. The TREAT radiography system is used to perform neutron radiography of fuels, experiments, and other specimens before and after irradiation within the TREAT reactor. The TREAT neutron radiography facility performed approximately 5,000 radiographs by the spring of 1977. Originally built in 1958, the TREAT Facility was in operation until it was placed in a shutdown status in 1994. Following the Fukushima incident and seeing a need for enhanced accident tolerant fuels, the United Stated Department of Energy decided to restart the TREAT facility and resume transient operations. In November 2017, the TREAT reactor was successfully restarted and is currently performing operational testing in preparation for initial experiment irradiations and transient testing. This paper discusses efforts to reactivate the TREAT neutron radiography facility. To characterize the neutron beam, gold foil activation measurements were made to determine an average neutron flux and flux profile. An open beam image provides the information about variations in the beam profile. A series of system qualification radiographs have been acquired to determine the effective image acquisition parameters, resulting image quality, and the relationships between the two.

Keywords
Transient Reactor Test (TREAT) Facility, TREAT, Neutron Radiography

Published online 1/5/2020, 7 pages
Copyright © 2020 by the author(s)
Published under license by Materials Research Forum LLC., Millersville PA, USA

Citation: Shawn R. Jensen, Aaron E. Craft, Glen C. Papaioannou, Wyatt W. Empie, Blaine R. Ward, Reactivation of the Transient Reactor Test (TREAT) Facility Neutron Radiography Program, Materials Research Proceedings, Vol. 15, pp 292-298, 2020

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21741/9781644900574-46

The article was published as article 46 of the book Neutron Radiography

Content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.

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