Techniques have been developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory for accurately calculating certain spent-fuel isotope concentration ratios for pressurized water reactor assemblies using a linked MCNP/ORIGEN2 code named Monteburns 3.01, without resorting to an assembly or full-core calculation. The effects of various fuel parameters such as the number of radial fuel regions per pin, burnup step size, reactor power, reactivity control mechanisms, and axial profiles have been studied. The significance of each factor was determined. A method was also proposed for calculating spent-fuel inventories as a function of burnup for a wide range of reactors and fuel types. It was determined that accurate calculations can be obtained using a three-dimensional, modified pin cell with seven radial fuel regions and two (flat-flux) axial fuel regions calculated with 2000 MWd/tonne U burnup steps for burnups ranging from 0 to 50 000 MWd/tonne U. The calculational technique was benchmarked to measured values from the Calvert Cliffs Unit 1 reactor, and good agreement from the point of view of calibrating a monitoring instrument was found for most cases.