Calculations of curium isotope impurities in production of ¹⁴⁴Ce with high specific activity for artificial sources of antineutrino - 5122

The radioactive nuclide ¹⁴⁴Ce can be used as artificial source of antineutrino. It can be produced from spent fuel of power reactors. Curium isotopes are extracted along with ¹⁴⁴Ce in chemical processing. They are sources of neutrons because of spontaneous fission. Neutron activity of Curium should be reduced to allowable level. In this paper, results of calculations of accumulation of ¹⁴⁴Ce and Curium isotopes in different modes of operation of fuel assemblies in VVER-440 power reactor are presented. Three-, four- and five-year cycles of fuel assemblies burning in the reactor were considered. Different computation codes were used in calculations in order to take into account the heterogeneous structure of fuel assemblies and different radial and axial distributions of power. Detailed data on accumulation ¹⁴⁴Ce, other Cerium isotopes, Curium isotopes, intensity of neutron source caused by Curium isotopes were calculated. Calculations show that the typical values of specific activity of ¹⁴⁴Ce is (5*10¹¹ - 8*10¹¹) Bq/g while the total activity is (1.5*10¹⁴ - 2.5*10¹⁴) Bq per fuel assembly