Qualification of the APOLLO2.8 code package for the calculation of the fuel inventory and reactivity loss of UOx spent fuels in BWRs

Autor: Romain Eschbach, David Bernard, Alain Santamarina, Pierre Leconte, Jean-François Vidal, Jean-Pascal Hudelot
Rok vydání: 2009
Předmět:
Zdroj: Annals of Nuclear Energy. 36:362-367
ISSN: 0306-4549
Popis: This paper describes the neutronics qualification of the APOLLO2.8 code package for the calculation of UOx fuel inventory and reactivity loss with burn-up in Boiling Water Reactors (BWR). In the first part, the study deals with the analyses of spent fuels through the isotopic content of actinides (U, Pu, Np, Am, Cm), fission products used to evaluate the burn-up (Nd, Cs) and the most absorbing fission products (Sm, Eu, Gd). The interpretation performed with the APOLLO2.8 code package shows that the concentrations of the main fissile isotopes – 235U, 239Pu and 241Pu – are predicted to better than 8% on the overall height of the fissile column, with an experimental uncertainty below 5% (1σ). For the second part, reactivity worth measurements of irradiated UOx fuels were performed in the MINERVE facility using an oscillation technique. The analysis shows a very good agreement between the calculated and the experimental values of reactivity loss for the three samples, with different void fraction and burn-up. The Calculation - Experiment biases (C/E − 1) are lower than +1.8%, with an uncertainty of 2.8% (1σ).
Databáze: OpenAIRE