Title: Sensitivity of nuclear fuel-cycle cost to uncertainties in nuclear data. Final report
Abstract: An improved capability for assessing the economic implications of uncertainties in nuclear data and methods on the power reactor fuel cycle was developed. This capability is applied to the sensitivity analysis of fuel-cycle cost with respect to changes in nuclear data and related computational methods. Broad group sensitivities for both a typical BWR and a PWR are determined under the assumption of a throwaway fuel cycle as well as for a scenario under which reprocessing is allowed. Particularly large dollar implications are found for the thermal and resonance cross sections of fissile and fertile materials. Sensitivities for the throwaway case are found to be significantly larger than for the recycle case. Constrained sensitivities obtained for cases in which information from critical experiments or other benchmarks is used in the design calculation to adjust a parameter such as anti ..nu.. are compared with unconstrained sensitivities. Sensitivities of various alternate fuel cycles were examined. These included the extended-burnup (18-month) LWR cycle, the mixed-oxide (plutonium) cycle, uranium-thorium and denatured uranium-thorium cycles, as well as CANDU-type reactor cycles. The importance of the thermal capture and fission cross sections of /sup 239/Pu is shown to be very large in all cases. Detailed, energy dependent sensitivity profiles are provided for the thermal range (below 1.855 eV). Finally, sensitivity coefficients are combined with data uncertainties to determine the impact of such uncertainties on fuel-cycle cost parameters.