First burnup credit application including actinides and fission products for transport and storage cask by using French experiments

Abstract

The burnup credit (BUC) methodology for a transport and storage cask application, including actinides and fission products, is implemented at AREVA TN using the French BUC calculation route for pressurized water reactor (PWR) UO2 used fuel. The methodology is based on the connection of the French depletion code DARWIN2 and the French criticality safety package CRISTAL V1. The BUC methodology includes the experimental validation of the computation codes dedicated to the calculation of the used fuel inventory calculations. Indeed, the results of the comparison calculation–experiment (C−E)/E allow to determine either a set of isotopic correction factors (ICFs) for the BUC nuclides considered in the criticality calculation or keff-penalty terms directly used for the definition of the keff-acceptance criterion for the criticality assessment of the transport and storage cask. These ICFs or keff-penalty terms are one of the key of the BUC method to guarantee the conservativeness of the fuel reactivity in safety-criticality calculations using BUC approach. A French BUC program has been developed at CEA/Cadarache in the framework of the CEA–AREVA collaboration in order to validate fuel inventory calculations. This program involves two kinds of experiments: chemical analyses and microprobe measurements of PWR irradiated fuel pins (French PIE program) on one hand, and reactivity worth measurements of the BUC nuclides in the MINERVE reactor on the other hand. This paper highlights, through a first industrial AREVA TN's application of the BUC method, including fission products, that the French PIE program and reactivity worth measurements in MINERVE reactor are suitable for the implementation of BUC in transport and storage cask applications loaded with PWR UO2 used fuels assemblies.