Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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A new burn-up module for application in fuel performance calculations targeting the helium production rate in (U,Pu)O2 for fast reactors

  • Cechet, A. (Politecnico di Milano, Department of Energy, Nuclear Engineering Division) ;
  • Altieri, S. (Politecnico di Milano, Department of Energy, Nuclear Engineering Division) ;
  • Barani, T. (Politecnico di Milano, Department of Energy, Nuclear Engineering Division) ;
  • Cognini, L. (Politecnico di Milano, Department of Energy, Nuclear Engineering Division) ;
  • Lorenzi, S. (Politecnico di Milano, Department of Energy, Nuclear Engineering Division) ;
  • Magni, A. (Politecnico di Milano, Department of Energy, Nuclear Engineering Division) ;
  • Pizzocri, D. (Politecnico di Milano, Department of Energy, Nuclear Engineering Division) ;
  • Luzzi, L. (Politecnico di Milano, Department of Energy, Nuclear Engineering Division)
  • Received : 2020.08.21
  • Accepted : 2020.12.01
  • Published : 2021.06.25
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Abstract

In light of the importance of helium production in influencing the behaviour of fast reactor fuels, in this work we present a burn-up module with the objective to calculate the production of helium in both in-pile and out-of-pile conditions tracking the evolution of 23 alpha-decaying actinides. This burn-up module relies on average microscopic cross-section look-up tables generated via SERPENT high-fidelity calculations and involves the solution of the system of Bateman equations for the selected set of actinide nuclides. The results of the burn-up module are verified in terms of evolution of actinide and helium concentrations by comparing them with the high-fidelity ones from SERPENT, considering two representative test cases of (U,Pu)O2 fuel in fast reactor conditions. In addition, a code-to-code comparison is made with the independent state-of-the-art module TUBRNP (implemented in the TRANSURANUS fuel performance code) for the same test cases. The herein presented burn-up module is available in the SCIANTIX code, designed for coupling with fuel performance codes.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This research has received funding from the Euratom research and training programme 2014-2018 through the INSPYRE Project under grant agreement No. 754329.

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