The new version of the criticality guide sheets collection

A. Dorval (1) , M. Prigniau (1) , P. Casoli (1) , E. Fillastre (1) , E. Gagnier (1)

1 CEA-DES (ex-DEN) - CEA-Direction des Energies (ex-Direction de l'Energie Nucléaire)

The purpose of the criticality guide sheets is to gather useful elements in order to lead a criticality safety analysis for a nuclear installation containing fissile material. The first version of this guide has been performed in 2001 [1] for the IQC (Ingénieurs Qualifiés en Criticité – Engineers Qualified in Criticality safety) of the French CEA (Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives) [2]. It was composed of 27 sheets, each of them dealing with a specific topic such as: bounding fissile medium definition, criticality control by limitation of the fissile material mass, neutron reflection… This paper presents the new version of these criticality guide sheets, published in 2018. This new version is an enhancement of the former one and includes new elements, in particular sheets dealing with: -principles of a criticality safety analysis, -basics of criticality calculations, -usual pitfalls of criticality. Moreover, many elements have been integrated in order to update the guide: -the new French criticality safety resolution [3], -actualized results of criticality calculations, performed with the CRISTAL V2.0 criticality package, -application examples… These new criticality guide sheets are now provided during the training sessions for the new IQC organized by the INSTN (National Institute of Nuclear Sciences and Techniques). Furthermore, this new version is now available for anyone, including outside the CEA. Some of the sheets are currently being translated into English and examples will be provided.

Domains: Nuclear Experiment [nucl-ex]; Nuclear Theory [nucl-th]

A. Dorval, M. Prigniau, P. Casoli, E. Fillastre, E. Gagnier. The new version of the criticality guide sheets collection. ICNC 2019, Sep 2019, Paris, France. ⟨cea-02394058⟩