Comparison of Neutronics-Depletion Coupling Schemes for Burnup Calculations

Four predictor-corrector schemes for coupling the neutronics and depletion in burnup calculations are compared in four assembly segment test cases with various step lengths. Three of the coupling schemes are established methods. The last one, LE/QI with substeps, is one of the higher-order methods presented in our earlier publications. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it serves as a further validation of LE/QI, as well as a demonstration of the advantage it provides over the prior methods. Second, it aims to shed some light on the relative performances of the three prior methods as only two of them appear to have been compared in the open literature. Determining the relative performances of the prior methods is a value in itself, but it also serves to complement the results of our earlier studies, which compared the higher-order methods to only one of the prior methods.