Fission Product Experimental Program: Validation and Computational Analysis

From 1998 to 2004, a series of critical experiments referred to as the fission product (FP) experimental program was performed at the Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique Valduc research facility. The experiments were designed by Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire (IRSN) and funded by AREVA NC and IRSN within the French program supporting development of a technical basis for burnup credit validation. The experiments were performed with the following six key fission products encountered in solution either individually or as mixtures: ¹⁰³Rh, ¹³³Cs, ^natNd, ¹⁴⁹Sm, ¹⁵²Sm, and ¹⁵⁵Gd. The program aimed at compensating for the lack of information on critical experiments involving FPs and at establishing a basis for FPs credit validation. One hundred forty-five critical experiments were performed, evaluated, and analyzed with the French CRISTAL criticality safety package and the American SCALE5.1 code system employing different cross-section libraries. The aim of the paper is to show the experimental data potential to improve the ability to perform validation of full burnup credit calculation. The paper describes three phases of the experimental program; the results of preliminary evaluation, the calculation, and the sensitivity/uncertainty study of the FP experiments used to validate the APOLLO2-MORET 4 route in the CRISTAL criticality package for burnup credit applications.