Base irradiation simulation and its effect on fuel behavior prediction by TRANSURANUS code: Application to reactivity initiated accident condition

The purpose of the present paper is to investigate the impact of the base irradiation simulation for predicting fuel behavior under Reactivity Initiated Accident (RIA) conditions. A RIA is a scenario challenging the fuel integrity and consequently, devoted experimental campaigns and related code simulations have been extensively performed. In all experiments in which irradiated fuel is tested, the experiment is preceded by in reactor period, i.e. the base irradiation. In the present paper the considered RIA experiment is CIP3-1 performed in CABRI reactor (part of the OECD/NEA WGFS benchmark); a discussion about the relevance of the base irradiation simulation is presented. Such a work is conducted by sensitivities calculation in which a single parameter, among a preselected set, is changed. The range of variation of such parameters is either supplied within the selected RIA test specification or is taken from typical values available in the open literature. All mentioned calculations have been performed developing a specific model in TRANSURANUS code.