Development and validation of the depletion capability of the high-fidelity neutronics code NECP-X

The depletion capability of NECP-X is developed. Two depletion libraries are developed for depletion calculations. One full-fidelity depletion library contains 1547 isotopes, and a new compressed depletion library is generated. Cross sections from the EAF-2010 library are integrated into depletion libraries, which give cross sections for reaction channels not included in the ENDF library. For the traditional predictor-corrector method, two transport calculations are conducted during every depletion step, where transport calculation is very time consuming, so a new transport-depletion coupling strategy is developed to reduce calculation time. The VERA depletion benchmark problems are utilized to assess the accuracy of compressed depletion library and new coupling method. The equivalent pin-cell model and assembly model, which are often used for validation, are asserted by comparing to the full-core model. Finally, measurement data for 22 fuel samples are used to validate the depletion capability of NECP-X. The results demonstrate good accuracy of NECP-X.