U.S. Regulatory Research Program for Implementation of Burnup Credit in Transport Casks

In 1999 the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (U.S. NRC) initiated a research program to support the development of technical bases and guidance that would facilitate the implementation of burnup credit into licensing activities for transport and dry cask storage. This paper reviews the following major areas of investigation: (1) specification of axial burnup profiles, (2) assumption on cooling time, (3) allowance for assemblies with fixed and removable neutron absorbers, (4) the need for a burnup margin for fuel with initial enrichments over 4 wt %, and (5) evaluation of assay data and critical experiments. The capabilities of a new computational tool that facilitates the performance and coupling of the depletion and criticality analyses needed for burnup credit are also discussed.