Effects of evaluated nuclear data libraries on the calculation results for fuel burnup with minor actinides in a VVER reactor

Abstract

The paper deals with assessing the effects of the ENDF/B-VI.8, ENDF/B-VII.0, JEFF 3.1 and JEFF 3.1.1 nuclear data libraries on the results of calculating a number of functionals for a system based on a VVER reactor with fuel with a large fraction of minor actinides (up to 10%). Key estimates have been obtained for the errors introduced by libraries in calculations of systems with minor actinides (MA) based on a VVER-1200 reactor: – for reactivity, σρ = 0.3 βeff; – for isotopic compositions with minor actinides, ≤ 5% (the error for each particular isotope is different); – for the total mass of accumulated MAs, εm = 0.8%. Conclusions have been made with respect to the need for the further refinement of the library MA data proceeding from the nature of the calculation tasks that dictate the requirements for the accuracy of nuclear constants. It has been shown that systems based on VVER-1000/1200/1300 reactors with MAs need to be calculated using several libraries of evaluated nuclear data created at different organizations and based on the largest possible number of non-recurrent sets of experimental data.