Validation of CELL-2 calculations for predicting the isotopic content of exposed LWR fuel: Final report

Technical Report · Sat Jul 01 04:00:00 EDT 1989

OSTI ID:5948209

Williams, M L

The one-dimensional pin-cell analysis code CELL-2 has recently been released by EPRI as part of a major core physics design package referred to as ARMP-02. Within this package, CELL-2 is used to parameterize different sections of a fuel assembly (fuel cell, burnable poison cell, guide tube, etc.) at different exposure points and under different core conditions (moderator and fuel temperature, void or soluble boron concentration, etc.). The adequacy of CELL-2 for core physics calculations has been validated in the ARMP-02 documentation. The objective of the present work is to demonstrate its suitability for use in calculating the isotopic compositions of spent fuel. To validate the accuracy of CELL-2 calculations performed with the ENDF/B-V cross section libraries, six experiments for which measured isotopics data is available have been analyzed. This study demonstrates that CELL-2, using the ENDF/B-V cross section library, produces reliable predictions for the isotopics of exposed fuel. The calculated results nearly always agree within 5% of the measured values, and are most often within the claimed experimental uncertainty of the measurements. In the few instances where the disagreement exceeds 5%, the cause can usually be attributed to significant non-uniformities in the reactor lattice configuration, for which the one-dimensional supercell model in CELL-2 is expected to break down, or to uncertainties in the fuel temperatures. Therefore the present results, along with the conclusions of the earlier work, provide strong evidence that the ENDF/B-V CELL-2 code will be able to accurately predict the reactivity of exposed LWR fuel pins in addition to their isotopic contents. 32 refs., 13 figs., 32 tabs.

• Research Organization: Electric Power Research Inst., Palo Alto, CA (USA). Nuclear Power Div.; Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge, LA (USA). Nuclear Science Center
• OSTI ID: 5948209
• Report Number(s): EPRI-NP-6440
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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