Development of an Efficient and Accurate Analysis Approach for Radioisotope Production in Safari-1

Abstract

The Radiation and Reactor Theory Section of the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation SOC Ltd (Necsa) is developing a core simulator, OSCAR-4, for the analysis of material test reactors and to provide nuclear engineering analysis services to the SAFARI-1 reactor and NTP Radioisotopes SOC Ltd, which is located within Necsa. The analysis services include reactor reload verification and in-core and ex-core irradiation analyses for safety assessment and irradiation planning for radioisotope production.
This work presents our calculation system and tools used to facilitate the production of radioisotopes and their ability to predict experimental measurements. In particular, we present the results from the comparison of calculation prediction and measured activities for the production of the yttrium-90 radioisotope.
The calculated results obtained for sixty three different irradiation configurations show an under-prediction of the measured activities 9.1 % with a variance of 5.4 %.