skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: OECD/NEA Burnup Credit Calculational Criticality Benchmark Phase I-B Results

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/814588· OSTI ID:814588

Burnup credit is an ongoing technical concern for many countries that operate commercial nuclear power reactors. In a multinational cooperative effort to resolve burnup credit issues, a Burnup Credit Working Group has been formed under the auspices of the Nuclear Energy Agency of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. This working group has established a set of well-defined calculational benchmarks designed to study significant aspects of burnup credit computational methods. These benchmarks are intended to provide a means for the intercomparison of computer codes, methods, and data applied in spent fuel analysis. The benchmarks have been divided into multiple phases, each phase focusing on a particular feature of burnup credit analysis. This report summarizes the results and findings of the Phase I-B benchmark, which was proposed to provide a comparison of the ability of different code systems and data libraries to perform depletion analysis for the prediction of spent fuel isotopic concentrations. Results included here represent 21 different sets of calculations submitted by 16 different organizations worldwide, and are based on a limited set of nuclides determined to have the most important effect on the neutron multiplication factor of light-water-reactor spent fuel. A comparison of all sets of results demonstrates that most methods are in agreement to within 10% in the ability to estimate the spent fuel concentrations of most actinides. All methods are within 11% agreement about the average for all fission products studied. Furthermore, most deviations are less than 10%, and many are less than 5%. The exceptions are {sup 149}Sm, {sup 151}Sm, and {sup 155}Gd.

Research Organization:
Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORY (US)
DOE Contract Number:
AC05-00OR22725
OSTI ID:
814588
Report Number(s):
ORNL-6901; TRN: US0304269
Resource Relation:
Other Information: PBD: 1 Jan 1993
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English