End effect analysis with various axial burnup distributions in high density spent fuel storage racks

Highlights: • Criticality tests are carried out with various axial burnup distributions of fuel assemblies for spent fuel storage racks. • KENO-Va code system was used to obtain criticalities with 10 axial segments. • ORIGEN-S code system was used to obtain burnup dependent axial compositions. • The criticality and burnup dependent reactivity difference are obtained from the results. • End effect quantifications are satisfactory confirming the previous suggestions. - Abstract: End effect of spent fuel comes from the difference between uniform and actual axial burnup distributions of fuel assemblies. It is significant to control the criticality safety in spent fuel storage and transportation. This work is focused on estimation of end effect in the spent fuel of light water reactor for the spent fuel storage rack region-II. High and low burnups of corresponding different uranium enrichments are taken into consideration to analyze the end effect with different axial burnup distributions such as uniform, MOC and EOC profiles. Two types of fuel assemblies such as CE type and Westinghouse type are considered. The whole calculations have been carried out by using the SCALE6 code including ORIGEN-S and KENO-Va