NUREG-1537, Part 2 - NRC

10 EXPERIMENTAL FACILITIES AND
UTILIZATION
This chapter contains guidance for evaluating the information on the experimental
facilities at the reactor, their use, and associated safety considerations. The
applicant sbould provide sufficient information in the SAR to demonstrate that no
proposed operations involving experimental facilities would result in unacceptable
radiological risk to reactor operations personnel, experimenters, or the general
public.
The guidance in this chapter is consistent with Regulatory Guides 2.2 and 2.4.
The reviewer should be familiar with these documents.
Non-power reactors have many experimental, educational, and service uses. The
experimental facilities may penetrate the reactor core or reflector, be located near
the core, or be an integral part of the reactor. Samples can be irradiated in the
core or the reflector, or neutron or other radiation beams can be extracted from the
core region through the biological shield.
Utility, integrity, longevity, versatility, diversity, and safety should be considered
for the experimental facilities in the same manner they are considered for the
reactor core and its operational components and systems. The safety analyses of
the reactor facility should include the experimental facilities and their interactions
with the core and its other reactor systems. If changes in reactor operating
characteristics are proposed, the reviewer should check to see that potential
interactions'between the core and the experimental facilities are analyzed as
appropriate.
The reviewer will probably evaluate SARs in which the analyzed safety envelope
for experiments and experimental facilities is very broad and the technical
specifications are performance based so that the applicant can take maximum
advantage ofthe requirements of 1o CFR 50.59 for changes in the experimental
program and facilities. ' '
Some non-power reactors are' operated as cnitical facilities to demonstrate fuel
loading and perform reactor physics studies. In such cases, the reactor itself
should also be considered an experimental facility. The reviewer will find that this
section of the SAR and the experimental technical specifications will focus on
allowable core configurations and reactor physics constraints for operating entire'
or partial cores as experiments
This chapter of the SAR should contain an analysis demonstrating that the reactor
and experimental facilities can be operated safely during normal operations and
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