Fission Fragment Decay Heat by Using the Most Recent Evaluated Nuclear Data Library ENDF/B-VIII

Abstract

In this paper, a home-made code was designed to calculate the decay heat emitted by fission fragments as a result of successive radioactive emissions after a fission burst. The nuclear data necessary for the calculations was extracted from the latest version of the Evaluated Nuclear Data Library ENDF/B-VIII.0. The code can calculate the decay heat of thermal and fast neutron-induced fission reactions on the isotopes of Thorium, Protactinium, Uranium, Neptunium, Plutonium, Americium, Curium, California, Einsteinium, and Fermium. A numerical method was used in this work to calculate the decay heat of all fission fragments due to the individual thermal or fast fissions of the isotopes of the previous ten actinides. The most influential nuclei in the decay heat were also identified at different times after the fission event. Moreover, the code showed high capability in calculating the fission fragments inventories and decay heats due to the decay of fission fragments of 31 fissionable nuclei.