Validation of SCALE depletion methods for PWR spent-fuel isotopic characterization

Shielding calculations for commercial light water reactor spent fuel configurations rely on an accurate estimate of spent fuel contents to properly estimate radiation source terms. At the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), shielding analyses have generally used the SAS2H analytical sequence of the SCALE-4 code system to predict the radionuclide composition of depleted fuel. Validation studies have recently been completed to establish the accuracy of SCALE-4 for the calculation of pressurized water reactor (PWR) spent fuel isotopic compositions, based on the comparison of calculational results with relevant experimental measurements. This summary presents a set of PWR spent fuel samples for which numerical depletion models have been developed. Spent fuel isotopic concentrations computed using these models are compared with measured nuclide densities to determine the adequacy of the numerical estimates