In-plant test measurements for spent fuel storage at Morris Operation. Volume 2. Fuel bundle radiation levels

How well does ORIGEN predict spent LWR (Light Water Reactor) fuel characteristics

“…Further, inaccuracies introduced by the individual codes cannot be determined. Strickler (12) found reasonable agreement (a factor of 2) between the predicted [ORIGEN and QAD-F (3)] and the measured values for locations near the sides of the fuel;…”

“…The experimental heat-generation data for fuel assemblies have been compared with those predicted using 0RIGEN2 (4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11). Comparisons of measured values with those predicted by ORIGEN agree to within ±10%; the experimental data scatter is also ~±10%.…”

“…Gainma exposure rates have been measured near full fuel bundles in a pool experiment (12) and surrounding a partially and fully loaded spent fuel storage cask (8,11). In both cases, a combination of an ORIGEN code for prediction of the photon source and a radiation transport code were required; this makes it impossible to completely separate experimental errors from inaccuracies introduced by the codes.…”

Validation of Gamma Dose Rate Calculation Methodology using the Morris and Turkey Point Measurements

“…Their fuel burnup ranged from 26.4 GWD/MTU to 40.2 GWD/MTU, and the fuel assembly cooling time before measurement ranged from 30 months to 83 months. The main characteristics of the fuel assemblies were listed in Table 1 as well as their fuel burnup and decay histories [3].…”

“…In this study, the Morris experiments [3] and the Turkey Point experiments [4,5] are used to assess the numerical procedure used for calculating the dose rates from the discharged spent nuclear fuel assembly. The nuclear fuel assembly becomes radioactive after it is irradiated in the power reactor for a period of time.…”