STATUS AND PERSPECTIVES OF THE OECD/NEA WORKING PARTY ON NUCLEAR CRITICALITY SAFETY PROJECTS

New issues in criticality safety continue to emerge as spent fuel storage facilities reach the saturation point, fuel enrichments and burn-ups increase and new types of plutonium-carrying fuels are being developed. The new challenges related to the manipulation, transportation and storage of fuel demand further work to improve models predicting behaviour through new experiments, especially where there is a lack of data in the present databases. This article summarises the activities of the OECD/NEA working groups that co-ordinate and carry out work in the domain of criticality safety at the international level. Particular attention is devoted to establishing sound databases required in this area and to addressing issues of high relevance such as burn-up credit. The activities of working groups are aimed toward improving safety and identifying economic solutions to issues concerning the back-end of the fuel cycle. In particular the activities of the following groups are reviewed: • Burn-up credit criticality benchmarks. • International Criticality Safety Benchmark Experiments Project. • Sub-critical benchmark experiments. • Minimum critical values. • Experimental needs in criticality safety.