User's manual for the radioactive decay and accumulation code RADAC

The RADAC computer code calculates radioactive decay and accumulation of decayed products using an algorithm based on the direct use of the Bateman equations and referred to here as the yield factor method. This report explains the yield factor method, gives an overview of the various modules in the RADAC code system, and describes the decay and accumulation code in detail. The RADAC code has capacity for two waste types and can accommodate up to 60 years of annual waste inputs. Decay times as high as 1 million years can be calculated. The user supplies the undecayed composition and radioactivity of the waste placed in storage each year. The code calculates the decayed composition, radioactivity, and thermal power of the accumulated waste at the end of each year and gives the results in terms of grams and curies of individual radionuclides. Calculations can be made for up to 19 waste storage sites in a single run. For each site and each waste type, calculations can be made by 1-year steps up to 60 years, by 10-year steps to 160 years, and by 6 discrete steps to 1 million years. Detailed outputs can be printed for each waste site and each time step by individual radionuclides. Summarized outputs are also available. Excluding data-preparation time, RADAC requires about 2 min to run 19 waste sites with two types of transuranic waste at each site, using a 486 DX computer with a clock speed of 33 MHz. Because RADAC uses a preselected set of decay times and does not make in-reactor calculations, it should not be viewed as a substitute for ORIGEN2. RADAC is intended for use in applications in which accumulations at the decay times provided by the code are sufficient for the user's purposes