Kriging-based inverse uncertainty quantification of nuclear fuel performance code BISON fission gas release model using time series measurement data

In nuclear reactor fuel performance simulation, fission gas release (FGR) and swelling involve treatment of several complicated and interrelated physical processes, which inevitably depend on uncertain input parameters. However, the uncertainties associated with these input parameters are only known by “expert judgment”. In this paper, inverse Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) under the Bayesian framework is applied to BISON code FGR model based on Risø-AN3 time series experimental data. Inverse UQ seeks statistical descriptions of the uncertain input parameters that are consistent with the available measurement data. It always captures the uncertainties in its estimates rather than merely determining the best-fit values. Kriging metamodel is applied to greatly reduce the computational cost during Markov Chain Monte Carlo sampling. We performed a dimension reduction for the FGR time series data using Principal Component Analysis. We also projected the original FGR time series measurement data onto the PC subspace as “transformed experiment data”. A forward uncertainty propagation based on the posterior distributions shows that the agreement between BISON simulation and Risø-AN3 time series measurement data is greatly improved. The posterior distributions for the uncertain input factors can be used to replace the expert specifications for future uncertainty/sensitivity analysis.