Regular Article

Development of a MOX equivalence Python code package for ANICCA

Tractebel (ENGIE), Boulevard Simón Bólivar 34-36, 1000 Brussels, Belgium

^* e-mail: bart.vermeeren@tractebel.engie.com

Received: 15 July 2021
Received in final form: 15 October 2021
Accepted: 10 November 2021
Published online: 21 December 2021

Abstract

The basis of the MOX (Mixed OXide) energy equivalence principle is keeping the in-core fuel management characteristics (cycle length, feed size, etc.) of a nuclear reactor unchanged when replacing UOX (Uranium OXide) fuel assemblies by MOX. If the effect of the loading pattern is neglected, such an equivalence is obtained by tuning the Pu content in the MOX fuel, while considering the specific Pu isotopic vector at the time of the core reload to obtain a crossing of the reactivity curves of UOX and MOX at the end-of-cycle core average burnup. It is proposed in this work to extend the fuel cycle analysis tool ANICCA (Advanced Nuclear Inventory Cycle Code) with a MOX equivalence Python code package, which automatically governs the supply and demand of Pu vector isotopes required to obtain MOX equivalence. This code package can determine the reactivity evolution for any given Pu vector by means of a multidimensional interpolation on a directive grid of pre-calculated data tables generated by WIMS10, covering the physically accessible Pu vector space. A fuel cycle scenario will be assessed for a representative evolution of the Pu vector inventory available in spent UOX fuel as a demonstration case, defining the interim fuel storage building dimensional requirements for different reprocessing strategies.