Validation of lattice physics code STREAM for predicting pressurized water reactor spent nuclear fuel isotopic inventory

Abstract

This work investigates the depletion capability implemented in lattice physics code STREAM for the prediction of pressurized water reactor (PWR) uranium dioxide (UO2) spent nuclear fuel (SNF) isotopic inventory. The validation of this capability is performed by comparison of STREAM calculation results to measured SNF assay data obtained from PWRs Takahama-3, Calvert Cliffs and GKN II. The depletion analysis is conducted with the ENDF/B-VII.0 library and uses a pin cell model of the fuel rods from which the fuel samples were taken. The Chebyshev Rational Approximation Method (CRAM) is used to solve the depletion equation with about 1300-1600 isotopes in the depletion chain. 16 actinides and 23 fission products are analyzed in 14 spent UO2 fuel samples. The actinides are isotopes of uranium, neptunium, plutonium, americium and curium. The fission products nuclides include isotopes of cesium, neodymium, europium, samarium as well as 106Ru, 144Ce, 155Gd, 99Tc, 90Sr, 109Ag, and 103Rh. The sensitivity of some of the nuclides to the details of the power history and the adjustment of the fuel sample burnup is discussed. The impact of using ENDF/B-VII.0 library instead of ENDF/B-VI.8 is also discussed. Most of the nuclides analyzed are well predicted within ±7% of the experiment for actinides and fission products. STREAM depletion results are also compared to the codes SWAT, HELIOS and SCALE results based on publicly available information in literature, to check the performance of STREAM relative to other codes for the prediction of SNF isotopic inventory. The comparison to other code systems shows that the implementation in STREAM is of comparable accuracy. Overall, this paper demonstrates that the depletion capability in STREAM can be reliably applied to predict the isotopic inventory of PWR UO2 SNF for burnup ranging from 14 to 54 GWd/t and initial enrichment ranging from 3.0 to 4.1 wt% 235U.