An extension of the validation of SCALE (SAS2H) isotopic predictions for PWR spent fuel

Abstract

Isotopic characterization of spent fuel via depletion and decay calculations is necessary for determination of source terms. Unlike fresh fuel assumptions typically used in criticality safety analysis of spent fuel configurations, burnup credit applications also rely on depletion and decay calculations to predict spent fuel composition; these isotopics are used in subsequent criticality calculations to assess the reduced worth of spent fuel. To validate the depletion codes and data, experiment is compared with predictions; such comparisons have been done in earlier ORNL work. This report describes additional independent measurements and corresponding calculations as a supplement. The current work includes measured isotopic data from 19 spent fuel samples from the Italian Trino Vercelles PWR and the US Turkey Point-3 PWR. In addition, an approach to determine biases and uncertainties between calculated and measured isotopic concentrations is discussed, together with a method to statistically combine these terms to obtain a conservative estimate of spent fuel isotopic concentrations. Results on combination of measured-to-calculated ratios are presented. The results described herein represent an extension to a new reactor design and spent fuel samples with enrichment as high as 3.9 wt% {sup 235}U. Consistency with the earlier work for each of two different cross-section libraries suggests that the estimated biases for each of the isotopes in the earlier work are reasonably good estimates.