Validation of a method for prediction of isotopic concentrations in burnup credit applications

Abstract

Unlike fresh fuel assumptions typically employed in the criticality safety analysis of spent fuel configurations, burnup credit applications rely on depletion and decay calculations to predict the isotopic composition of spent fuel. These isotopics are used in subsequent criticality calculations to assess the reduced worth of the spent fuel. To validate the codes and data used in depletion approaches, experimental measurements are compared with numerical predictions for relevant spent fuel samples. This paper describes a set of experimentally characterized pressurized-water-reactor (PWR) fuel samples and provides a comparison to results of SCALE-4 depletion calculations. 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