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NRC proposed rule for licensing reactors authorized by DOE, DOD
Nuclear reactor designs approved by the Department of Energy or Department of Defense could get streamlined pathways through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s commercial licensing process should applicants wish to push the technology into the civilian sector.
A proposed rule introduced April 2 by the NRC would “improve NRC licensing review efficiency, where applicable, by explicitly establishing by regulation an additional means for reactor applicants to demonstrate the safety functions of their reactor designs, and thus, would contribute to the safe and secure use and deployment of civilian nuclear energy technologies.”
Kenya Suyama, Hiroki Mochizuki, Takehide Kiyosumi
Nuclear Technology | Volume 138 | Number 2 | May 2002 | Pages 97-110
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT02-A3282
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The burnup code system Step-Wise Burnup Analysis Code System (SWAT) is revised for use in a burnup credit analysis. An important feature of the revised SWAT is that its functions are achieved by calling validated neutronics codes without any changes to the original codes. This feature is realized with a system function of the operating system, which allows the revised SWAT to be independent of the development status of each code.A package of the revised SWAT contains the latest libraries based on JENDL-3.2 and the second version of the JNDC FP library. These libraries allow us to analyze burnup problems, such as an analysis of postirradiation examination (PIE), using the latest evaluated data of not only cross sections but also fission yield and decay constants.Another function of the revised SWAT is a library generator for the ORIGEN2 code, which is one of the most reliable burnup codes. ORIGEN2 users can obtain almost the same results with the revised SWAT using the library prepared by this function.The validation of the revised SWAT is conducted by calculation of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development/Nuclear Energy Agency burnup credit criticality safety benchmark Phase I-B and analyses of PIE data for spent fuel from Takahama Unit 3. The analysis of PIE data shows that the revised SWAT can predict the isotopic composition of main uranium and plutonium with a deviation of 5% from experimental results taken from UO2 fuels of 17 × 17 fuel assemblies. Many results of fission products including samarium are within a deviation of 10%. This means that the revised SWAT has high reliability to predict the isotopic composition for pressurized water reactor spent fuel.
