Extrapolations to critical for systems with large inherent sources

Abstract

An approach to delayed critical experiment was performed in 1981 at Pacific Northwest Laboratory with a cylindrical tank of plutonium-uranium nitrate solution. During this experiment, various methods to determine the critical height were used, including (1) extrapolation of the usual plot of inverse count rate vs. height, which estimates the delayed critical height (DCH); (2) the inverse count rate vs. height divided by count rate, which corrects somewhat for the change in inherent source size as the height changes; (3) ratio of spectral densities vs. height, which extrapolates to DCH; (4) extrapolations of prompt neutron decay constant vs. height, which extrapolates to the prompt critical height (PCH); and (5) inverse kinetics rod drop (IKRD) methods, which measure {Delta}k/k{Beta} very accurately for a particular solution height. The problem with some of the extrapolation methods is that the measured data are not linear with height, but, for lack of anything better, linear extrapolations are made. In addition to the measurements to determine the delayed critical height subcriticality measurements by the {sup 252}Cf source driven frequency analysis method were performed for a variety of subcriticality heights. This paper describes how all these methods were applied to obtain the critical height of a cylindrical tank of plutonium nitrate solution and how the subcritical neutron multiplication factor was obtained.