Development of a 3D deterministic fuel depletion code

Abstract

[EN] Predicting the isotopic evolution and its impact in the core performance becomes crucial for designing and operating nuclear reactors. This work faces the starting point of developing a depletion code using the latest advances in numerical computing. MATLAB will be used to create a depletion program, getting the necessary nuclear data from the SCALE code system. Burn-up chains, managing of the proper nuclear data, creating, and solving ODE systems are analysed in the present work. As a result, a fuel depletion code was created. The code can perform depletion calculations for a single fuel material for a reduced burn-up chain. The relative error between the obtained and the reference nuclides concentrations is considerably low. The general assumptions, requirements and methodology for creating a depletion code have been analysed and verified.