History, Development and Future of TRIGA Research Reactors

Abstract

Ever since the training, research, isotopes, General Atomics (TRIGA)[1] reactor concept was developed in the second half of the 1950s, these facilities have played an important role worldwide in contributing to both basic and applied nuclear research. Within the first two decades, approximately 60 TRIGA research reactors of various designs had been constructed and licensed in four continents mainly for academic research and industrial applications. Thousands of scientific articles refer to research performed with TRIGA reactors, many Master of Science theses and doctoral dissertations have been successfully accomplished with experiments conducted at these facilities, and even specific TRIGA topical conferences have been organized, resulting in the development of a unique community, which is now nearly 60 years old. Since its inception, TRIGA technology and the staff involved have arrived at an era when knowledge retention and ageing management has become more crucial than ever if this community and technology are to continue to deliver state of the art basic and applied research. Indeed, in most cases technology experts and staff participating in the startup and operation of their TRIGA reactors will retire or have retired, many ageing reactor components have had to be replaced, development of digital instrumentation and control systems has phased out the original systems based on now obsolete vacuum tubes and obsolete solid state circuitry, and many TRIGA research reactors had even to close down owing to the lack of end users, budgetary constraints or other issues. The basic incentive for this publication started at the IAEA Technical Meeting on Research Reactor Coalitions: Global Issues of TRIGA Research Reactors, held in Vienna, Austria, from 4 to 8 November 2013. The overall objective of the meeting was to define and establish the initial composition, organization and strategy (road map) of the Global TRIGA Research Reactor Network around goals such as: strengthened regional and global cooperation among TRIGA facilities towards the development of solutions for common issues and challenges; enhancement of TRIGA reactor utilization through common and complementary products and services as well as exchange of experiences and practices; increased viability and visibility of TRIGA reactor operation in the future through contacts and effective relationships with national and international stakeholders; and development of promotional tools advertising TRIGA capabilities and advocating continued operation. The meeting participants also jointly agreed to initiate the preparation of this publication, which contains compact information and a summary on the founding, history and continued development of TRIGA reactors over the last 60 years, on specific topics such application and utilization aspects, ageing management, core conversion and other fuel issues, and presents challenges and future perspectives of TRIGA research reactors worldwide. This publication will be a useful source of information for a much broader stakeholder community than just representatives of TRIGA reactors themselves. In addition, a number of individual Member State contributions have been collected and included on the attached CD-ROM to illustrate the historical developments of TRIGA reactors through individual facility examples and experiences. In the preparation of this publication, the IAEA acknowledges the valuable contributions of the individual authors and of the experts who provided input and reviewed this publication, in particular H. Boeck (Austria), J. Razvi (United States of America) and M. Villa (Austria). The IAEA officer responsible for this publication was D. Ridikas of the Division of Physical and Chemical Sciences.

[1] TRIGA is a registered trademark of General Atomics (USA).