Evaluation of radiation source term for the DUPIC fuel core

The radiation source term of the DUPIC fuel CANDU reactor was estimated for the total and gap inventories of fission products. The calculation was performed by the ELESTRES code using fuel burnup and linear power distribution obtained from the reactor physics calculations. The radiation source term represented by the fission products gap inventory was 46912 TBq for the 1/4 DUPIC fuel core, while it was 75448 TBq for the natural uranium core. Such a reduction of the radiation source term for the DUPIC fuel core can be attributed to the lower linear power of the DUPIC fuel bundle caused by the flattened power distribution of the DUPIC fuel core which adopts a 2-bundle shift refueling scheme. It is therefore expected that the consequence of the loss of coolant accident for the DUPIC fuel core could be weak when compared to the natural uranium core from the viewpoint of radiation doses to the public