Advanced hybrid analysis system for nuclear facility design with best estimate source terms

Abstract There are some restrictions regarding conventional analysis tools, where overall source terms representing a variety of spent fuels or radwastes with different physical characteristics, irradiation profiles, and decay history should be estimated. A hybrid analysis system that adopts several functional modules was developed to overcome existing barriers to support R&D action plans for the achievement of an advanced fuel cycle employing a pyroprocess in connection with a sodium-cooled fast reactor in the Republic of Korea. Requirements for the advanced system were first defined, followed by development of several functional modules to perform depletion and decay calculation, mixture composition calculation, decay only calculation, and a reprocessing simulation. The developed analysis system was also verified against ORIGEN-ARP for completeness. With the analysis system, it was possible to carry out a source term assessment taking into account respective physical, irradiation, and aging characteristics of each SF. Through several pseudo problems, it was confirmed that the developed system could reasonably perform source term assessment essential to achieve an advanced fuel cycle by utilizing several functional modules sequentially.