Impact of Nuclear Data Uncertainties on Calculated Spent Fuel Nuclide Inventories and Advanced NDA Instrument Response

Hu, Jianwei; Gauld, Ian C.

Title: Impact of Nuclear Data Uncertainties on Calculated Spent Fuel Nuclide Inventories and Advanced NDA Instrument Response

Full Record
Other Related Research

Abstract

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Next Generation Safeguards Initiative Spent Fuel (NGSI-SF) project is nearing the final phase of developing several advanced nondestructive assay (NDA) instruments designed to measure spent nuclear fuel assemblies for the purpose of improving nuclear safeguards. Current efforts are focusing on calibrating several of these instruments with spent fuel assemblies at two international spent fuel facilities. Modelling and simulation is expected to play an important role in predicting nuclide compositions, neutron and gamma source terms, and instrument responses in order to inform the instrument calibration procedures. As part of NGSI-SF project, this work was carried out to assess the impacts of uncertainties in the nuclear data used in the calculations of spent fuel content, radiation emissions and instrument responses. Nuclear data is an essential part of nuclear fuel burnup and decay codes and nuclear transport codes. Such codes are routinely used for analysis of spent fuel and NDA safeguards instruments. Hence, the uncertainties existing in the nuclear data used in these codes affect the accuracies of such analysis. In addition, nuclear data uncertainties represent the limiting (smallest) uncertainties that can be expected from nuclear code predictions, and therefore define the highest attainable accuracy of the NDAmore »« less

Authors:

Hu, Jianwei ^[1]; Gauld, Ian C. ^[1]

Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Reactor and Nuclear System Div.

Publication Date:: Mon Dec 01 00:00:00 EST 2014

Research Org.:: Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)

Sponsoring Org.:: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)

OSTI Identifier:: 1185442

Grant/Contract Number:: AC05-00OR22725

Resource Type:: Accepted Manuscript

Journal Name:: ESARDA Bulletin

Additional Journal Information:: Journal Volume: 51; Journal ID: ISSN 0392-3029

Publisher:: European Safeguards Research & Development Association

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

Subject:: 98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL PROTECTION

Citation Formats


                    Hu, Jianwei, and Gauld, Ian C. Impact of Nuclear Data Uncertainties on Calculated Spent Fuel Nuclide Inventories and Advanced NDA Instrument Response.  United States: N. p., 2014. 
Web.

Copy to clipboard


                    Hu, Jianwei, & Gauld, Ian C. Impact of Nuclear Data Uncertainties on Calculated Spent Fuel Nuclide Inventories and Advanced NDA Instrument Response.  United States.

Copy to clipboard


                    Hu, Jianwei, and Gauld, Ian C. Mon .  
"Impact of Nuclear Data Uncertainties on Calculated Spent Fuel Nuclide Inventories and Advanced NDA Instrument Response".  United States.  https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1185442.

Copy to clipboard


                    
@article{osti_1185442,

  title        = {Impact of Nuclear Data Uncertainties on Calculated Spent Fuel Nuclide Inventories and Advanced NDA Instrument Response},

  author       = {Hu, Jianwei and Gauld, Ian C.},

  abstractNote = {The U.S. Department of Energy’s Next Generation Safeguards Initiative Spent Fuel (NGSI-SF) project is nearing the final phase of developing several advanced nondestructive assay (NDA) instruments designed to measure spent nuclear fuel assemblies for the purpose of improving nuclear safeguards. Current efforts are focusing on calibrating several of these instruments with spent fuel assemblies at two international spent fuel facilities. Modelling and simulation is expected to play an important role in predicting nuclide compositions, neutron and gamma source terms, and instrument responses in order to inform the instrument calibration procedures. As part of NGSI-SF project, this work was carried out to assess the impacts of uncertainties in the nuclear data used in the calculations of spent fuel content, radiation emissions and instrument responses. Nuclear data is an essential part of nuclear fuel burnup and decay codes and nuclear transport codes. Such codes are routinely used for analysis of spent fuel and NDA safeguards instruments. Hence, the uncertainties existing in the nuclear data used in these codes affect the accuracies of such analysis. In addition, nuclear data uncertainties represent the limiting (smallest) uncertainties that can be expected from nuclear code predictions, and therefore define the highest attainable accuracy of the NDA instrument. This work studies the impacts of nuclear data uncertainties on calculated spent fuel nuclide inventories and the associated NDA instrument response. Recently developed methods within the SCALE code system are applied in this study. The Californium Interrogation with Prompt Neutron instrument was selected to illustrate the impact of these uncertainties on NDA instrument response.},

  doi          = {},

  journal      = {ESARDA Bulletin},

  number       = ,

  volume       = 51,

  place        = {United States},

  year         = {Mon Dec 01 00:00:00 EST 2014},

  month        = {Mon Dec 01 00:00:00 EST 2014}

}

Copy to clipboard

Journal Article:

Free Publicly Available Full Text

Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Publisher's Version of Record

The DOI is not currently available

Other availability

Search WorldCat to find libraries that may hold this journal

Save / Share:

Export Metadata

Save to My Library

Similar Records in DOE PAGES and OSTI.GOV collections:

Creating NDA working standards through high-fidelity spent fuel modeling

Conference Skutnik, Steven E ; Gauld, Ian C ; Romano, Catherine E ; ...

The Next Generation Safeguards Initiative (NGSI) is developing advanced non-destructive assay (NDA) techniques for spent nuclear fuel assemblies to advance the state-of-the-art in safeguards measurements. These measurements aim beyond the capabilities of existing methods to include the evaluation of plutonium and fissile material inventory, independent of operator declarations. Testing and evaluation of advanced NDA performance will require reference assemblies with well-characterized compositions to serve as working standards against which the NDA methods can be benchmarked and for uncertainty quantification. To support the development of standards for the NGSI spent fuel NDA project, high-fidelity modeling of irradiated fuel assemblies is beingmore »« less
Developing Spent Fuel Assembly for Advanced NDA Instrument Calibration - NGSI Spent Fuel Project

Technical Report Hu, Jianwei ; Gauld, Ian C. ; Banfield, James ; ...

This report summarizes the work by Oak Ridge National Laboratory to investigate the application of modeling and simulation to support the performance assessment and calibration of the advanced nondestructive assay (NDA) instruments developed under the Next Generation Safeguards Initiative Spent Fuel (NGSI-SF) Project. Advanced NDA instrument calibration will likely require reference spent fuel assemblies with well-characterized nuclide compositions that can serve as working standards. Because no reference spent fuel standard currently exists, and the practical ability to obtain direct measurement of nuclide compositions using destructive assay (DA) measurements of an entire fuel assembly is prohibitive in the near term duemore »« less
https://doi.org/10.2172/1122693

Full Text Available
ADVANTG Results for a Proposed NDA System for Detecting Pin Diversion from SNF - Paper 120

Conference Mosher, Scott W. ; Daily, Charles R. ; Johnson, Jeffrey O.

This summary describes the results of applying the ADVANTG variance reduction parameter generator to accelerate continuous-energy Monte Carlo simulations of the {sup 252}Cf Interrogation with Prompt Neutron (CIPN) detection system proposed by Hu et al. for detecting the diversion of fuel elements from spent nuclear fuel (SNF) assemblies. In previous work, ADVANTG was applied to a suite of nine radiation detection, special nuclear material (SNM) movement detection, and safeguards test cases. That effort demonstrated that ADVANTG was able to provide large increases in tally figures of merit (FOMs) in nearly all of the cases without introducing bias into the Montemore »« less
Nuclear Resonance Fluorescence to Measure Plutonium Mass in Spent Nuclear Fuel

Technical Report Ludewigt, Bernhard A ; Quiter, Brian J ; Ambers, Scott D

The Next Generation Safeguard Initiative (NGSI) of the U.S Department of Energy is supporting a multi-lab/university collaboration to quantify the plutonium (Pu) mass in spent nuclear fuel (SNF) assemblies and to detect the diversion of pins with non-destructive assay (NDA) methods. The following 14 NDA techniques are being studied: Delayed Neutrons, Differential Die-Away, Differential Die-Away Self-Interrogation, Lead Slowing Down Spectrometer, Neutron Multiplicity, Passive Neutron Albedo Reactivity, Total Neutron (Gross Neutron), X-Ray Fluorescence, {sup 252}Cf Interrogation with Prompt Neutron Detection, Delayed Gamma, Nuclear Resonance Fluorescence, Passive Prompt Gamma, Self-integration Neutron Resonance Densitometry, and Neutron Resonance Transmission Analysis. Understanding and maturity ofmore »« less
https://doi.org/10.2172/1015332

Full Text Available
Nuclear Resonance Fluorescence for Safeguards Applications

Technical Report Ludewigt, Bernhard A ; Quiter, Brian J ; Ambers, Scott D

In nuclear resonance fluorescence (NRF) measurements, resonances are excited by an external photon beam leading to the emission of {gamma} rays with specific energies that are characteristic of the emitting isotope. The promise of NRF as a non-destructive analysis technique (NDA) in safeguards applications lies in its potential to directly quantify a specific isotope in an assay target without the need for unfolding the combined responses of several fissile isotopes as often required by other NDA methods. The use of NRF for detection of sensitive nuclear materials and other contraband has been researched in the past. In the safeguards applicationsmore »« less
https://doi.org/10.2172/1022713

Full Text Available

Similar Records