Numerical approach to calculate the decay heat of actinides for short cooling time

Abstract Calculations of the decay heat is of great important for the design of the shielding of discharged fuel, the design and transport of fuel-storage flasks and the management of the resulting radioactive waste. These are relevant to safety and have large economic and legislative consequences. In this paper, a new approach has been proposed to evaluate the decay heat power after a fission burst of a fissile nuclide for short cooling time. This method is based on the numerical solution of coupled linear differential equations that describe decays and buildups of the minor fission products (MFPs) nuclides. A computer program called HEATKAU is written entirely in the MATLAB programming environment. The MATLAB data can be stored in a standard, fast and easy-access, platform- independent binary format which is easy to visualize. Systematic comparisons with the measurements and the results evaluated by the summation method for 235 U and 239 Pu show the consistency and reliability of the current method.

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