A personal history of the development of molten-salt reactors in the United States is presented. The initial goal was an aircraft propulsion reactor, and a molten fluoride-fueled Aircraft Reactor Experiment was operated at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1954. In 1956, the objective shifted to civilian nuclear power, and reactor concepts were developed using a circulating UF4-ThF4 fuel, graphi...

Radionuclides of caesium are environmentally important since they are formed as significant high yield fission products (Cs and Cs) and activation products (Cs and Cs) during nuclear fission. They originate from a range of nuclear activities such as weapons testing, nuclear reprocessing and nuclear fuel cycle discharges and nuclear accidents. Whilst Cs, Cs and Cs are routinely measurable at hig...

Several options for designing fast reactors to operate in the Breed-and-Burn (B&B) mode are compared and a strategy is outlined for early introduction of B&B reactors followed by a gradual increase in the fuel utilization of such reactors. In the first phase the fast reactor core will consist of a subcritical B&B blanket driven by a relatively small critical seed. As the required discharge burn...

Fuel cycle cost of a fast reactor is expected to play an important role of compensating for higher capital cost of a Fast Reactor and keeping the unit energy cost competitive. PFBR fuel cycle cost has been worked out by a committee constituted for the purpose. The cost has been worked out for a peak fuel burn-up of 1,00,000 MWd/t. The basic components of the PFBR fuel cycle are fabrication cost...

iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my parents for providing me with a loving and supportive environment which cultivated my love for science and the drive to pursue it; my advisor, Professor Stacey for his insight, guidance, and reassurance throughout my introduction to the discipline of nuclear engineering; Professor Petrovic who helped refine my understanding of reactor physics; the p...

The nature of two explosions that were witnessed within 3 s at the Chernobyl-4 reactor less than a minute after 21:23:00 UTC on April 25, 1986, have since then been the subject of sprawling interpretations. This paper renders the following hypothesis. The first explosion consisted of thermal neutron mediated nuclear explosions in one or rather a few fuel channels, which caused a jet of debris t...

By performing global fits to inverse beta decay (IBD) yield measurements from existing neutrino experiments based at highly $^{235}$U enriched reactor cores and conventional low-enriched cores, we explore current direct bounds on production by the sub-dominant fission isotope $^{241}$Pu. For this nuclide, determine an IBD of $\sigma_{241}$ = 8.16 $\pm$ 3.47 cm$^2$/fission, a value (135 58)% tha...

Experiments with surrogate materials were performed at bench scale to demonstrate a halogenation technique applicable treatment of used aluminum matrix test reactor fuel. The involves dissolution and separation from fuel in molten-halide salt systems prior disposition the fuel’s uranium fission products. Demonstration was neodymium metal as non-radiological for metal. involved blending forms am...