American Nuclear Society
Home

Home / Publications / Journals / Nuclear Technology / Volume 137 / Number 2

Nuclide Composition Benchmark Data Set for Verifying Burnup Codes on Spent Light Water Reactor Fuels

Yoshinori Nakahara, Kenya Suyama, Jun Inagawa, Ryuji Nagaishi, Setsumi Kurosawa, Nobuaki Kohno, Mamoru Onuki, Hiroki Mochizuki

Nuclear Technology / Volume 137 / Number 2 / February 2002 / Pages 111-126

Technical Paper / Fuel Cycle and Management / dx.doi.org/10.13182/NT02-2

To establish a nuclide composition benchmark data set for the verification of burnup codes, destructive analyses of light water reactor spent-fuel samples, which were cut out from several heights of spent-fuel rods, were carried out at the analytical laboratory at the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute. The 16 samples from three kinds of pressurized water reactor (PWR) fuel rods and the 18 samples from two boiling water reactor (BWR) fuel rods were examined. Their initial 235U enrichments and burnups were from 2.6 to 4.1% and from 4 to 50 GWd/t, respectively. One PWR fuel rod and one BWR fuel rod contained gadolinia as a burnable poison. The measurements for more than 40 nuclides of uranium, transuranium, and fission product elements were performed by destructive analysis using mass spectrometry, and alpha-ray and gamma-ray spectrometry. Burnup for each sample was determined by the 148Nd method. The analytical methods and the results as well as the related irradiation condition data are compiled as a complete benchmark data set.