Fission Products that come from the MCNP output?

Join the discussion
Ask a follow-up here, or get your own question answered by working scientists, mathematicians and engineers — people, not an autocomplete.
Real named experts · corrections over time · the nuance an AI answer skips
3 replies · 2K views
Aly_19f
Messages
9
Reaction score
1
TL;DR
What are the most important fission products?
What are the most important fission products should I include/care about that comes out from the MCNP output?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
This depends so much on what question you want to ask MCNP. X and 6 can calculate some forms of depletion but I don't know if they simulate poisoning and every fission product.

Iodine-135 and it's decay to Xenon-135 are especially relevant to reactor operation, but all fission products start as the double humped curve mess you see in textbooks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine_pit

If this doesn't help, tell us more about what the problem is.
 
Reply
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: Astronuc and Aly_19f
Certainly, Iodine-135 and it's decay to Xenon-135 are two important radionuclides. Samarium-149 (σ = 74,500 b) is another important poison, and to a lesser extent Promethium-147.
See - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_poison#Transient_fission_product_poisons and following section.

For verifying burnup calculations, one would also look at Rh-103, -106; Cs-134/Cs-137; and Nd-143,145, and possibly Nd-146, -148.
 
Reply
  • Informative
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: Aly_19f and Alex A
The answer is also going to depend strongly on what type of system you are modeling. The most important fission products for a thermal system are much different from the most important fission products in a fast system.

For example, Xe-135 is extremely critical in a thermal spectrum, but only modestly important in a fast spectrum.

In practice, the list of "important" fission products is usually tuned for each reactor type.
 
Reply
  • Like
  • Informative
Likes   Reactions: Alex A and Astronuc