Dr. James Banfield
Senior Engineer in Criticality Safety
Global Nuclear Fuel
GE Hitachi

Abstract

High Assay Low Enriched Uranium (HALEU) projects are being proposed at fuel fabricators around the country including at Global Nuclear Fuel – Americans (GNF-A) to fabricate ²³⁵U up to 8 wt.% enrichment.  Currently, fuel fabricators received enriched uranium hexafluoride (UF₆) in a Model 30B cylinder.  The most economical option would be to continue to receive up to 8 wt.% ²³⁵U in the same container with the same weight constraints (2,277 kg UF₆).  This paper undertakes a study looking at a simplified right circular cylinder model as well as a detailed 30B model including the ellipsoidal head as well as the skirt. In addition, both models consider either a maximum allowable net weight or a fully filled condition to determine the criticality safety index using the existing Model 30B/UX-30 for HALEU transport.  Using the state of the art fully three-dimensional continuous energy Monte Carlo Code SCALE/KENO-VI along with statistical methodology to develop the corresponding bias and bias uncertainty to determine Upper Safety Limit (USL), this work demonstrates the CSI = 0.0 for the Model 30B can support up to 8 wt.% ²³⁵U using the existing container and maximum allowable net weight.

Biography

Dr. James (Jim) Banfield received his BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Mississippi in 2008.  Jim received his MS and PhD in Nuclear Engineering in 2010 and 2013 respectively from the University of Tennessee. During his graduate studies, he worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory on various projects including cross section processing in AMPX for SCALE as well as his PhD work on the AMP Multiphysics fuel performance code.  Jim started working for GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy / Global Nuclear Fuel in 2013 in the Computation Methods team working on the advanced core simulator Aetna02 as the responsible engineer.  In 2016, Jim moved to the Fuel Performance and Development team as the responsible engineer for the Prime03 fuel performance code working on accident tolerant fuel, advanced coatings and new cladding types.  In 2019, Jim moved to the Nuclear Safety team for the Fuel Manufacturing Operation (FMO) as a Criticality Safety engineer.  In the nearly six years Jim has worked in FMO, Jim has worked on the Criticality Accident Alarm System detector placement analysis for LEU+ as well as a preliminary analysis for the Natrium Fuel Facility, new and revised Criticality Safety Analyses (CSAs) for both the existing 5 wt. % ²³⁵U operations as well as licensing for 8 wt. % LEU+ operations, and the to be built Natrium Fuel Facility which is proposed to process metallic uranium fuel at a maximum process enrichment of 20 wt. %.  Jim is currently a senior Criticality Safety engineer supporting existing and newly proposed operations.

Thursday, April 3. 2025
4:10 pm seminar

zoom link upon request