Reactivity effects of nonuniform axial burnup distributions on spent fuel

When conducting future criticality safety analyses on spent fuel shipping casks, burnup credit may play a significant role in determining the number of fuel assemblies that can be safely loaded into each cask. An important area in burnup credit analysis is the burnup variation along the length of the fuel assembly, which is determined by the location of the assembly in the reactor core and its residence time. A study of the effects of axial burnup distributions on reactivity has been conducted, using data from existing power plant fuel. Utilizing a one-dimensional, two-group diffusion code, named REALAX, the reactivity effects of axial burnup profiles have been calculated for various PWR fuel assemblies. The reactivity effects calculated by the code are defined in terms of k for the axially dependent burnup distribution minus k for a uniform axial burnup distribution at the assembly average burnup divided by k for a uniform axial burnup distribution at the assembly average burnup. Criticality safety specialists can take advantage of the quick-running code to determine axial effects of different assembly burnup profiles. In general, the positive reactivity effects of axial burnup distributions increase as burnup increases, though they do not increase faster than the overall decrease in reactivity due to burnup