Effect of neutron induced reactions of neodymium-147 and 148 on burnup evaluation

Suyama, Kenya; Mochizuki, Hiroki*

Burnup is important value for criticality safety evaluation of spent nuclear fuel. Nd-148 method is one of most important method to evaluate the burnup of post irradiation examination (PIE) samples, and well known that it has good accuracy. However, the evaluated burnup values could be perturbed by the neutron capture reaction of Nd-147 and Nd-148. And in the analysis of PIE data from PWR, the calculation results of Nd-148 have approximately more than 1% deviation from experiment. In this study, the contribution of neutron capture reaction of Nd-147 and Nd-148 to Nd-148 amount are discussed. Especially for Nd-147 contribution, it is shown that the current evaluated cross section of Nd-147 is not supported and the new evaluation is consistent with the analysis of PIE data. Possible perturbed amount of Nd-148 by both reactions is less than 0.7% for normal reactor operation condition, and it is approximately 0.1% for 30 GWd/t (BWR) and 40 GWd/t (PWR). Finally, we confirm again that Nd-148 method is good evaluation method.