SCALE-4 Analysis of LaSalle Unit 1 BWR Commercial Reactor Critical Configurations
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| ORNL_TM_1999_247.pdf (1.37 MB) | 1.37 MB |
Five commercial reactor criticals (CRCs) for the LaSalle Unit 1 boiling-water reactor
have been analyzed using KENO V.a, the Monte Carlo criticality code of the SCALE 4 code
system. The irradiated fuel assembly isotopics for the criticality analyses were provided by the
Waste Package Design team at the Yucca Mountain Project in the United States, who performed
the depletion calculations using the SAS2H sequence of SCALE 4. The reactor critical
measurements involved two beginning-of-cycle and three middle-of-cycle configurations. The
CRCs involved relatively low-cycle burnups, and therefore contained a relatively high
gadolinium poison content in the reactor assemblies. This report summarizes the data and
methods used in analyzing the critical configurations and assesses the sensitivity of the results to
some of the modeling approximations used to represent the gadolinium poison distribution
within the assemblies. The KENO V.a calculations, performed using the SCALE
44GROUPNDF5 ENDF/B-V cross-section library, yield predicted keff values within about 1%
Dk/k relative to reactor measurements for the five CRCs using general 8-pin and 9-pin
heterogeneous gadolinium poison pin assembly models.
