1. NAME AND TITLE

SHARDA: Sample Heat, Activity, Reactivity, and Dose Analysis for Safety Analysis of Irradiations in a Research Reactor.

2. CONTRIBUTOR

Reactor Services Division, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Bombay, India, through the OECD NEA Data Bank, Gif-sur-Yvette, France.

3. CODING LANGUAGE AND COMPUTER

Fortran 5.1; CDC CYBER 740.

4. NATURE OF PROBLEM SOLVED.

SHARDA is a program for assessing sample heating rates, activities produced and reactivity load caused while irradiating a small sample in a well thermalized research reactor like CIRUS. It estimates the sample cooling or lead shielding requirements to limit the gamma-ray dose rates due to the irradiated sample within permissible levels.

5. METHOD OF SOLUTION

Various thermal neutron nuclear data, neutron capture activation data (of consequence for gamma-ray dose rates), and the isotopic composition of all natural non-fissionable elements are compiled and built into the code. The data for gamma-ray attenuation in lead are also incorporated. Reactivity load per cm² of a white absorber evaluated at a reference point in a reactor (CIRUS in the present version) and the relative thermal neutron flux levels at all permissible irradiation locations in the reactor are also built in. The parameters of interest for a given sample (defined by its chemical formula or mixture specification) and its irradiation specification are evaluated using this built-in data library and the analytical expressions for the parameters derived under certain approximations.

6. RESTRICTIONS OR LIMITATIONS

The code was developed for the evaluation of pile irradiation requests at the CIRUS reactor and has much built-in data specifically for that reactor. The code can be used for most analyses, except thermal reactivity load, for other thermal research reactors by giving as input the absolute value of the irradiating thermal neutron flux.

7. TYPICAL RUNNING TIME

Generally only a few seconds of CPU time is required. The test case in this code package ran on a CDC CYBER 740 computer in l.8 seconds CPU time.

8. COMPUTER HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS

SHARDA was tested on a CDC CYBER 740 computer. The test case in this code package ran in 43621 (octal) words of main storage.

9. COMPUTER SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

SHARDA was executed under NOS 2.5.1 (CDC CYBER 740) with a FTN5.1+650 compiler.

10. REFERENCE

V. K. Shuka and A. Bajpai, "SHARDA - A Program for Sample Heat, Activity, Reactivity and Dose Analysis," BARC-1259 (1985).

11. CONTENTS OF CODE PACKAGE

Included is the referenced document and one (1.2MB) DOS diskette which contains the source code, sample problem input and output.

12. DATE OF ABSTRACT

December 1987.