Study of Nuclear Decay Data Contribution to Uncertainties in Heat Load Estimations for Spent Fuel Pools

At the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), a methodology for nuclear data uncertainty propagation in CASMO-5M (C5M) assembly calculations is under development. This paper presents a preliminary application of this methodology to C5M decay heat calculations. Applying a stochastic sampling method, nuclear decay data uncertainties are first propagated for the cooling phase only. Thereafter, the uncertainty propagation is enlarged to gradually account for cross-section as well as fission yield uncertainties during the depletion phase. On that basis, assembly heat load uncertainties as well as total uncertainty for the entire pool are quantified for cooling times up to one year. The relative contributions from the various types of nuclear data uncertainties are in this context also estimated.