Vera depletion benchmarks by CASL VERA, SERPENT and MCCARD with ENDF/B-VII.O and VII.1

The Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL) neutronics simulator MPACT is coupled with SCALE ORIGEN to perform depletion calculations based on neutron-material reaction and radioactive decay. The implementation of the standalone ORIGEN capability has been verified as documented in the SCALE software quality assurance plan. The validation of ORIGEN within the SCALE TRITON depletion sequence has also been validated through comparison with limited post-irradiation examination (PIE) data. However, it is a challenge to validate the depletion capability because of the limited measured data. Code-to-code comparisons are one means of evaluating the data and implementation for benchmark problems. Advanced continuous energy Monte Carlo codes include internal depletion capabilities, as they include less approximation, especially for reaction rates for isotopic depletion. The code-to-code comparison may not be so much a validation as it is a verification for cross section library and depletion capability. In this study, the depletion benchmark calculations were performed by MPACT with the ENDF/B-VII.O and VII.l MPACT 51-group library and SERPENT and McCARD with the ENDF/B-VII.O and VII. 1 ACE format libraries. Each code used its own burnup libraries and burnup chains, but the same recoverable energies of fissionable isotopes were used for fair comparison.