Issue |
EPJ Nuclear Sci. Technol.
Volume 3, 2017
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | 21 | |
Number of page(s) | 11 | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/epjn/2017015 | |
Published online | 30 June 2017 |
https://doi.org/10.1051/epjn/2017015
Regular Article
Reassessment of gadolinium odd isotopes neutron cross sections: scientific motivations and sensitivity-uncertainty analysis on LWR fuel assembly criticality calculations
1
ENEA, Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, Centro Ricerche “E. Clementel”,
Via Martiri di Monte Sole, 4,
40129
Bologna, Italy
2
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Bologna,
Via Irnerio, 46,
40126
Bologna, Italy
3
INFN,
Via Irnerio, 46,
40126
Bologna, Italy
* e-mail: federico.rocchi@enea.it
Received:
8
November
2016
Received in final form:
11
May
2017
Accepted:
2
June
2017
Published online: 30 June 2017
Gadolinium odd isotopes cross sections are crucial in assessing the neutronic performance and safety features of a light water reactor (LWR) core. Accurate evaluations of the neutron capture behavior of gadolinium burnable poisons are necessary for a precise estimation of the economic gain due to the extension of fuel life, the residual reactivity penalty at the end of life, and the reactivity peak for partially spent fuel for the criticality safety analysis of Spent Fuel Pools. Nevertheless, present gadolinium odd isotopes neutron cross sections are somehow dated and poorly investigated in the high sensitivity thermal energy region and are available with an uncertainty which is too high in comparison to the present day typical industrial standards and needs. This article shows how the most recent gadolinium cross sections evaluations appear inadequate to provide accurate criticality calculations for a system with gadolinium fuel pins. In this article, a sensitivity and uncertainty analysis (S/U) has been performed to investigate the effect of gadolinium odd isotopes nuclear cross sections data on the multiplication factor of some LWR fuel assemblies. The results have shown the importance of gadolinium odd isotopes in the criticality evaluation, and they confirmed the need of a re-evaluation of the neutron capture cross sections by means of new experimental measurements to be carried out at the n_TOF facility at CERN.
© F. Rocchi et al., published by EDP Sciences, 2017
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.