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CELL-2 gadolinium isotopics benchmarking with an ENDF/B-V library

Conference · · Transactions of the American Nuclear Society; (USA)
OSTI ID:6374412
One of the significant changes in ENDF/B-V relative to its predecessors is the increase of resonance integrals for the even-numbered isotopes of gadolinium. Gadolinium is widely used as a burnable poison in light water reactors (LWRs), and accurate predictions of its behavior are required for fuel management calculations. Furthermore, there has been a widespread suspicion among utilities with operating LWRs that their fuel management codes, most of which have cross-section libraries that predate ENDF/B-V, are underestimating the depletion rate of gadolinium (principally its strongly absorbing, odd-numbered isotopes). This paper presents the first comparison between measured gadolinium isotopics from an operating LWR and results from a code with a library based on ENDF/B-V. In particular, predictions were obtained from the CELL-2 pin-cell code, which is part of the EPRI-PRESS package and which uses a cross-section library derived directly from ENDF/B-V.
OSTI ID:
6374412
Report Number(s):
CONF-900608--
Conference Information:
Journal Name: Transactions of the American Nuclear Society; (USA) Journal Volume: 61
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English