Generation of fission yield covariance matrices and its application in uncertainty analysis of decay heat

TL;DR

This paper develops covariance matrices for fission yields using a GLS approach, improving decay heat uncertainty analysis by reducing propagated uncertainties from nuclear data libraries.

Contribution

It introduces a novel GLS-based method to evaluate fission yield covariances constrained by physical laws and data, enhancing decay heat uncertainty quantification.

Findings

Uncorrelated yield data contribute about 4% uncertainty at all times.

Generated covariance matrices significantly reduce decay heat uncertainty.

Uncertainty at 0.1s cooling time is about 10% for ENDF/B-VIII.0 and JEFF-3.3, and 5% for JENDL-5.

Abstract

The uncertainties and covariance matrices of fission yield are important in the uncertainty analysis of decay heat. At present, there are no covariance matrixes of fission yield given in the evaluated nuclear data library, although they have provided the uncertainties with good estimates. In this work, the generalized least squares (GLS) updating approach was adopted to evaluate the fission yield covariances with the constraints from basic physical conservation equation and chain yield data, using the nuclear data files from ENDF/B-VIII.0, JENDL-5 and JEFF-3.3. Based on these original and updated data, summation calculation was performed for fission pulse decay heat of thermal neutron-induced fission of $^{235}$U. The uncertainties of decay heat were obtained through generalized perturbation theory, including the uncertainties propagated from fission yield, decay energy, decay constant and branching ratio. The original uncorrelated yield data contributes a $\sim 4 \%$ uncertainty at all times and dominates the decay heat uncertainty at cooling times longer than \SI{100}{s}. With the generated covariance matrixes, the uncertainty of calculated decay heat is strongly reduced and decay energy data makes a major contribution in general. The relative uncertainties at cooling time \SI{0.1}{\second} are $\sim$10$\%$ for ENDF/V-VIII.0 and JEFF-3.3 and $\sim$5$\%$ for JENDL-5 and those at cooling time 10$^{5}$ s are about 1$\%$ for three libraries. The influence of the GLS updating procedure on the contributions of important fission products to decay heat and their sensitive coefficients was also discussed.