Criticality study of a spent fuel pool using SCALE 6.2.3 and MCNP6.2

Abstract

The North-West University (NWU) through the Reactor Analysis group in UETS plans to conduct research on the spent fuel pool using capabilities of the in-house code, North-West University Reactor Code Suite (NWURCS). Due to the unavailability of specifications of the Koeberg reactor and spent fuel pool, open-source literature has been used with assumptions that enable the development of a methodology and data to be relevant to Koeberg. This is the initial effort to perform spent fuel pool studies. The purpose of this study was to develop a methodology, which will guide further spent fuel pool studies and also verify the spent fuel pool modelling capabilities of NWURCS. The study considered the burnup of a fuel assembly and criticality of the spent fuel pool. Furthermore, criticality was studied using the AP1000 Combined License Technical Report (COLA) spent fuel pool system as a reference. Due to the unavailability of boron information for the system, a boron concentration study was carried out to gain more insight into the simulation, since boron is a significant material in the spent fuel pool. Sensitivity studies were also carried out. The calculations showed that the model agree well with the results given in the COLA document. Furthermore, MCNP6 and KENO-VI calculations for the spent fuel pool showed good agreement between each other.