Enrichment effects on CANDU-SEU spent fuel Monte Carlo shielding analysis

Shielding analyses are an essential component of the nuclear safety, the estimations of radiation doses in order to reduce them under specified limitation values being the main task here. According to IAEA data, more than 10 millions packages containing radioactive materials are annually transported world wide. All the problems arisen from the safe radioactive materials transport assurance must be carefully settled. Last decade, both for operating reactors and future reactor projects, a general trend to raise the discharge fuel burnup has been recorded world wide. For CANDU type reactors, the most attractive solution seems to be SEU and RU fuels utilization. The basic tasks accomplished by the shielding calculations in a nuclear safety analysis consist in dose rates calculation, to prevent any risks both for personnel protection and impact on the environment during the spent fuel manipulation, transport and storage. The paper aims to study the effects induced by fuel enrichment variation on CANDU-SEU spent fuel photon dose rates for a Monte Carlo shielding analysis applied to spent fuel transport after a defined cooling period in the NPP pools. The fuel bundles projects considered here have 43 Zircaloy rods, filled with SEU fuel pellets, the fuel having different enrichment in U-235. All the geometrical and material data related on the cask were considered according to the shipping cask type B model. After a photon source profile calculation by using ORIGEN-S code, in order to perform the shielding calculations, Monte Carlo MORSE-SGC code has been used, both codes being included in the ORNL's SCALE 5 system. The photon dose rates to the shipping cask wall and in air, at different distances from the cask, have been estimated. Finally, a photon dose rates comparison for different fuel enrichments has been performed. (author)