Taking burnup credit into account in criticality studies: the situation as it is now and the prospect for the future

Abstract

As enrichment of the fuel has become higher than the limits used at the designing stages, it seemed necessary to consider fuel depletion during irradiation to guarantee the criticality safety for relatively high enriched fuels transportation, storage or reprocessing. This burnup credit will make it possible to use the devices for spent fuels which are initially relatively high enriched. For that purpose, a method was developed considering: (i) partial Uranium-and-Plutonium burnup credit in the criticality studies, and (ii) a conservative assumption concerning the axial profile; this actinides-only method was supported by an experimental program called HTC. The method was accepted by the French Safety Authority. Moreover, in order to reduce again the calculated values of the reactivity for irradiated fuels, a French working group was set up in 1997 to define a conservative method which enables industrial companies to take burnup credit into account with some of the fission products and using a more precise profile. The work of this group has been divided into four tasks related to: the determination of (i) the composition of the fuel, (ii) a conservative profile, (iii) a conservative irradiation history, and (iv) the calculation scheme. This work is also supported by experimental programs related to the validation of the fission products effects, in terms of reactivity.