Comparison Between Wims-Aecl Depletion Calculations and a PWR Thorium Pin-Cell Burnup Benchmark

Abstract

The use of thorium in the fuel has raised new concerns and challenges especially in reactor physics modelling.  These challenges include: the use of existing nuclear data libraries, the use of non-advanced self-shielding methods, the presence of some isotopes related to the thorium chain, that exhibits some particular physics characteristics such as ²³²Th, ²³³Pa and ²³³U, and the accuracy of the depletion calculation.  In this paper, comparison between WIMS-AECL and some lattice codes, MOCUP (MCNP4B/ORIGEN2), CASMO-4 and HELIOS for burnup calculations has been performed for a PWR pin-cell thorium fuelled benchmark.  Results comparing the eigenvalue as a function of the burnup as well as the isotopic composition up to 60.749 MWd/kg show good agreement between WIMS-AECL and those codes.