In the 3rd revision of NUREG-0800, which was revised in 2007, the calculation method for decay heat in the design of the Ultimate Heat Sink (UHS) for a pressurized water reactor is recommended to be based on the ANSI/ANS-5.1 method. This method employs a more complex decay heat calculation formula compared to the one introduced in Branch Technical Position ASB 9-2, which was presented in the 2nd revision. While most of the variables for decay heat calculation in ANSI/ANS-5.1 can be inferred from the methods outlined in the appendices, determining the fractions of fission products is not straightforward despite their significant impact on the results. When reviewing documents that evaluate decay heat using the ANSI/ANS-5.1 method, it is observed that they often adopt a conservative approach by assuming that the fraction of the most influential fission product is 100%. In this study, the fractions of each fission product presented in LLNL’s 2016 report were used to calculate decay heat, and the results were compared with the ASB 9-2 method and ORIGEN code results. The comparison showed that ANS 5.1 tends to yield higher decay heat values than ANS 9-2, particularly at the reference time of 1M seconds, while ORIGEN-ARP generally produced lower values. Therefore, it is concluded that even when using the ANSI/ANS-5.1 method with the fractions of each fission product for decay heat calculations in spent nuclear fuel wet or dry storage facility assessments, it provides a sufficiently conservative thermal evaluation.

• Taehyeon Kim(Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP) Central Research Institute (KHNP-CRI)) Corresponding author
• Donghee Lee(Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP) Central Research Institute (KHNP-CRI))
• Eunjin Sim(Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP))