Fuel type effects on radionuclide inventory

Th e inventory of radionuclides in a reactor core is an important aspect of nuclear safety studies. In this study, fuel depletion analysis of a fuel assembly was performed. For this purpose, using ORIGEN-II and CALIC codes the inventory of radionuclides accumulated in a fuel assembly with the three different fuel types U3O8, U3Si2 and UAlx-Al after 200 days of operating time in various burns up values was were calculated. Th e actinides, activation, fission products are separately estimated and assessed. According to the results, infinite multiplication factor changed linearly with burn up time and the amount of the 239Pu produced by U3O8-Al was higher than the other fuel types. Also, the amount of the total fission products activity and decay heat and the amount of the total decay heat and activity from actinides by U3O8-Al was less than and higher than the other fuel types, respectively.