Transient Reactor Test Facility

[3] The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) decided to resume a program of transient testing,[4][5][6][7][8] and planned to invest about $75 million to restart the TREAT facility by 2018.

The TREAT fuel assemblies are approximately 9 feet long, and 4 inches square in cross section.

The second part of the axial reflector consists of permanent blocks of graphite, approximately 24 inches thick, stacked outside the core cavity.

The graphite, in addition to being the neutron moderator, also acts as a large thermal heat sink.

These characteristics allow TREAT to produce large 'self-limited' transients, which are limited by the fuel negative moderator coefficient without control rod movement.

The test assembly is a self-contained vehicle, that can contain fuel or materials for a variety of reactor types.

TREAT has a fast-neutron hodoscope that collimates and detects fast fission neutrons emitted by the experiment fuel sample.

[17] The Hornyak Button is a fast neutron detector that consists of a film of ZnS applied to lucite, which together form the 'button'.

TREAT can operate at steady state power levels of up to 120 kW to produce neutrons for the radiography facility.

In this basic function the TREAT RTS is similar to the Reactor Protection System (RPS) at a commercial power plant.

First, a commercial plant RPS uses combinational logic (e.g. 2 out of 3, or 2 out of 4) of the protection system channels to reduce the chance of an inadvertent reactor trip.

Since TREAT does not operate for long periods of time, the use of combinational logic to reduce the chance of an inadvertent trip is not needed.

[26][27][28][29][30][31] On September 18, 2018, TREAT completed the first experiment with a small sample of light water reactor fuel.

Today, Idaho National Laboratory, INL, personnel ran the first experiments in the Transient Reactor Test, TREAT, facility in nearly a quarter century.

One of those reactors was the TREAT facility, which operated from 1959-1994, and remained fully fueled while on standby status.

That decision paid off when, on August 31, 2017, the Resumption of Transient Testing Program was completed more than 1 year ahead of schedule and approximately $17 million under budget.

This highly successful restart at the TREAT facility was recognized in August, when a joint DOE-INL team won the Secretary of Energy Award.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry highlighted the TREAT restart team's effort and efficiency, and recognized the importance of the facility to nuclear energy scientists and engineers as they work to develop advanced nuclear fuels and reactor technologies.

[37]Stacy, Susan M. (2000) Proving the Principle: A History of the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, 1949–1999.