Title: Reactor critical benchmark calculations for burnup credit applications
Abstract: In the criticality safety analyses for the development and certification of spent fuel casks, the current approach requires the assumption of fresh fuel'' isotopics. It has been shown that the removal of the fresh fuel'' assumption and the use of spent fuel isotopics ( burnup credit'') greatly increases the payload of spent fuel casks by reducing the reactivity of the fuel. Regulatory approval of burnup credit and the requirements of ANSI/ANS 8.1 specify that calculational methods for away-from-reactor criticality safety analyses be validated against experimental measurements. Criticality analyses for low-enriched lattices of fuel pins using the fresh fuel isotopics'' assumption have been widely benchmarked against applicable critical experiments. However, the same computational methods have not been benchmarked against criticals containing spent fuel because of the non-existence of spent fuel critical experiments. Commercial reactors offer an excellent and inexhaustible source of critical configurations against which criticality analyses can be benchmarked for spent fuel configurations. This document provides brief descriptions of the benchmarks and the computational methods for the criticality analyses. 8 refs., 1 fig., 1 tab.
Publication Year: 1990
Publication Date: 1990-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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