Feasibility Assessment of Burnup Credit in the Criticality Analysis of Shipping Casks with Boiling Water Reactor Spent Fuel

Feasibility Assessment of Burnup Credit in the Criticality Analysis of Shipping Casks with Boiling Water Reactor Spent Fuel
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Total Pages: 44
Release: 1991
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Considerable interest in the allowance of reactivity credit for the exposure history of power reactor fuel currently exists. This burnup credit'' issue has the potential to greatly reduce risk and cost when applied to the design and certification of spent fuel casks used for transportation and storage. Recently, analyses have demonstrated the technical feasibility and estimated the risk and economic incentives for allowing burnup credit in pressurized water reactor (PWR) spent fuel shipping cask applications. This report summarizes the extension of the previous PWR technical feasibility assessment to boiling water reactor (BWR) fuel. This feasibility analysis aims to apply simple methods that adequately characterize the time-dependent isotopic compositions of typical BWR fuel. An initial analysis objective was to identify a simple and reliable method for characterizing BWR spent fuel. Two different aspects of fuel characterization were considered:l first, the generation of burn- up dependent material interaction probabilities; second, the prediction of material inventories over time (depletion). After characterizing the spent fuel at various stages of exposure and decay, three dimensional (3-D) models for an infinite array of assemblies and, in several cases, infinite arrays of assemblies in a typical shipping cask basket were analyzed. Results for assemblies without a basket provide reactivity control requirements as a function of burnup and decay, while results including the basket allow assessment of typical basket configurations to provide sufficient reactivity control for spent BWR fuel. Resulting basket worths and reactivity trends over time are then evaluated to determine whether burnup credit is needed and feasible in BWR applications.

Issues Related to Criticality Safety Analysis for Burnup Credit Applications

Issues Related to Criticality Safety Analysis for Burnup Credit Applications
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Total Pages: 15
Release: 1995
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Spent fuel transportation and storage cask designs based on a burnup credit approach must consider issues that are not relevant in casks designed under a fresh fuel loading assumption. Parametric analyses are required to characterize the importance of fuel assembly and fuel cycle parameters on spent fuel composition and reactivity. Numerical models are evaluated to determine the sensitivity of criticality safety calculations to modeling assumptions. This paper discusses the results of studies to determine the effect of two important modeling assumptions on the criticality analysis of pressurized-water reactor (PWR) spent fuel: (1) the effect of assumed burnup history (i.e., specific power during and time-dependent variations in operational power) during depletion calculations, and (2) the effect of axial burnup distributions on the neutron multiplication factor calculated for a three-dimensional (3-D) conceptual cask design.

Phenomena and Parameters Important to Burnup Credit

Phenomena and Parameters Important to Burnup Credit
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Total Pages: 16
Release: 2001
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Since the mid-1980s, a significant number of studies have been directed at understanding the phenomena and parameters important to implementation of burnup credit in out-of-reactor applications involving pressurized-water-reactor (PWR) spent fuel. The efforts directed at burnup credit involving boiling-water-reactor (BWR) spent fuel have been more limited. This paper reviews the knowledge and experience gained from work performed in the US and other countries in the study of burnup credit. Relevant physics and analysis phenomenon are identified, and an assessment of their importance to burnup credit implementation for transport and dry cask storage is given.

End Effects in the Criticality Analysis of Burnup Credit Casks

End Effects in the Criticality Analysis of Burnup Credit Casks
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Total Pages: 6
Release: 1990
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A study to evaluate the effect of axially dependent burnup on k{sub eff} has been performed as part of an effort to qualify procedures to be used in establishing burnup credit in shipping cask design and certification. This study was performed using a generic 31-element modular cast-iron cask (wall thickness 33.1 cm) with a 1-cm-thick borated stainless-steel basket for reactivity control. Fuel isotopics used here are those of the 17 x 17 Westinghouse assemblies from the North Anna Unit 1 reactor. Virginia Power (VP) provided detailed spatial isotopics for the fuel assemblies in-core at beginning-of-cycle 5 (BOC-5) as generated from their PDQ analyses. Twenty-two axial planes were defined in the original VP data. The isotopics used in this study were for a 3.41 initial wt % 235U and an average burnup of 31.5 GWd/MTU.

Preliminary Design Report

Preliminary Design Report
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Total Pages: 317
Release: 1990
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The purpose of this document is to provide information on burnup credit as applied to the preliminary design of the BR-100 shipping cask. There is a brief description of the preliminary basket design and the features used to maintain a critically safe system. Following the basket description is a discussion of various criticality analyses used to evaluate burnup credit. The results from these analyses are then reviewed in the perspective of fuel burnups expected to be shipped to either the final repository or a Monitored Retrievable Storage (MRS) facility. The hurdles to employing burnup credit in the certification of any cask are then outlines and reviewed. the last section gives conclusions reached as to burnup credit for the BR-100 cask, based on our analyses and experience. All information in this study refers to the cask configured to transport PWR fuel. Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) fuel satisfies the criticality requirements so that burnup credit is not needed. All calculations generated in the preparation of this report were based upon the preliminary design which will be optimized during the final design. 8 refs., 19 figs., 16 tabs.

Uncertainties in the Effects of Burnup and Their Impact on Criticality Safety Licensing Criteria

Uncertainties in the Effects of Burnup and Their Impact on Criticality Safety Licensing Criteria
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Total Pages: 6
Release: 1990
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Current criteria for criticality safety for spent fuel shipping and storage casks are conservative because no credit is permitted for the effects of burnup of the fuel inside the cask. Cask designs that will transport and store large numbers of fuel assemblies (20 or more) must devote a substantial part of their payload to criticality control measures if they are to meet this criteria. The Department of Energy is developing the data necessary to support safety analyses that incorporate the effects of burnup for the next generation of spent fuel shipping casks. The efforts described here are devoted to the development of acceptance criteria that will be the basis for accepting safety analyses. Preliminary estimates of the uncertainties of the effects of burnup have been developed to provide a basis for the consideration of critically safety criteria. The criticality safety margins in a spent fuel shipping or storage cask are dominated by the portions of a fuel assembly that are in low power regions of a reactor core, and the reactor operating conditions are very different from spent fuel storage or transport cask conditions. Consequently, the experience that has been gathered during years of reactor operation does not apply directly to the prediction of criticality safety margins for spent fuel shipping or storage casks. The preliminary estimates of the uncertainties presented in this paper must be refined by both analytical and empirical studies that address both the magnitude of the uncertainties and their interdependence. 9 refs., 5 figs.

Burnup Credit Applications in a High-capacity Truck Cask

Burnup Credit Applications in a High-capacity Truck Cask
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Total Pages: 8
Release: 1992
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General Atomics (GA) has designed two legal weight truck (LWT) casks, the GA-4 and GA-9, to carry four pressurized-water-reactor (PWR) and nine boiling-water-reactor (BWR) fuel assemblies, respectively. GA plans to submit applications for certification to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for the two casks in mid-1993. GA will include burnup credit analysis in the Safety Analysis Report for Packaging (SARP) for the GA-4 Cask. By including burnup credit in the criticality safety analysis for PWR fuels with initial enrichments above 3% U-235, public and occupation risks are reduced and cost savings are realized. The GA approach to burnup credit analysis incorporates the information produced in the US Department of Energy Burnup Credit Program. This paper describes the application of burnup credit to the criticality control design of the GA-4 Cask.