Improvement Of The Optimally-Weighted Predictor-Corrector Method For Nuclear Fuel Burnup Calculations

A new burnup calculation method for burnable absorber-containing fuels called the Advanced Optimally-Weighted Predictor-Corrector (AOWPC) method is proposed based on the OWPC method. The AOWPC method can effectively reduce the time discretization errors in the burnup calculation. Verification calculations comparing with the conventional predictor-corrector (PC) and projected PC (PPC) methods are performed for the PWR and BWR fuel assemblies. The calculation accuracy of the AOWPC method is higher than the conventional PC method, whose burnup step is one third of the AOWPC method, and the PPC method, whose burnup step is two thirds of the AOWPC method. The additional computation time per time step for the AOWPC method is negligible compared to those for the conventional PC and PPC methods. Therefore, the computation time of the burnup calculation can be reduced using the AOWPC method.