Nuclide Inventory Validation: Effect of Nuclear Data Libraries

Efforts are underway at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to expand the nuclide inventory validation basis for high-burnup spent nuclear fuel.Radiochemical assay experiments have been performed at ORNL to measure nuclide concentrations of key actinides and fission products in pressurized water reactor spent fuel samples over a burnup range of 30 to 70 GWd/t.Five of these measured fuel samples were studied in this work to investigate the impact of the nuclear data libraries on the calculated nuclide concentrations.Depletion simulations were performed for these samples using SCALE 6.3.1 with three different cross section libraries, based on ENDF/B-VII.1, ENDF/B-VIII.0, and a beta version of ENDF/B-VIII.1.The effect of the library used on the calculated-to-experimental nuclide concentration ratio was quantified for selected actinides and fission products, and the results are reported herein.