Plutonium build-up credits for a material test research reactor and influence of cross-section differences on actinide production

Burnup calculations with SARC system were carried out to analyse the effects of plutonium build-up on criticality of MTR type research reactor PARR-1 using several WIMSD libraries based on evaluated nuclear data files ENDFB-VI.8, JEF-2.2, JEFF-3.1 and JENDL-3.2. For equilibrium core of the reactor, it was found that a net reactivity of more than 3.5 mk is induced due to build-up of plutonium isotopes during depletion. The plutonium credit amounts to 3% of the length of equilibrium cycle. From the analysis of actinide production in the core during burnup, it was observed that in most of the cases, the amounts of actinides obtained using various cross section libraries agree fairly with each other, however, significant differences were observed for Pu-238, Pu-241, Am-242m, Am-243, Cm-242 and Cm-244 for some libraries. The actinide chain analysis was conducted to investigate the reasons for the observed differences. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.