Statistical Analyses of Post Irradiation Experiments of the BWR Forsmark
Computer codes which are to be used in nuclear safety research need to be validated prior to their application. For depletion codes, this validation can be done using data from post irradiation experiments (PIE). These experiments consist of a radiochemical analysis of small parts of a fuel rod (FR), which has been irradiated in a nuclear power plant as part of a fuel assembly (FA). This analysis allows the deduction of the isotopic composition of nuclides important for the desired application case. In addition the operation history at the sample location needs to be known and reported with the analysis results. In our work, we perform uncertainty and sensitivity analyses of a model based on a sample from the boiling water reactor (BWR) Forsmark-3 in order to deduce the influence of uncertain system parameters on the nuclide composition of the depleted fuel. In a second step we compare the resulting uncertainties of the nuclide densities with the deviation between their calculated and experimental values. The goal is to obtain quantitative uncertainty data which can be accounted for in a validation procedure. We use the Monte Carlo sampling approach, i.e. repeating the model calculation using statistically varied sets of the uncertain input parameters and analyzing the distributions of the result values statistically. BWR depletion calculations are especially demanding due to the increased complexity and heterogeneity compared to pressurized water reactors (PWR): extensively variable enrichments, complex FA geometries, partial length FRs, strong axially varying moderator density and the common use of gadolinium as burnable absorber in some of the FRs. However, the precise and correct calculation of BWR-depletion is extremely important in view of a possible application in burnup credit for BWR FAs. Therein credit is taken for the reduced reactivity of spent fuel due to the depletion of {sup 235}U for transport and intermediate or final storage.