Chain file for intermediate spectrum

Hello all,

I hope all of you are doing well. I have a question regarding chain file for reactor with intermediate (reduced moderation) spectrum. How much difference it is going to make if I use thermal/fast depletion chain?

Thanks in advance

Hi @khurrum. The only difference between the thermal/fast depletion chain is the capture branching ratios that are used (e.g., fraction of (n,γ) reactions in Mo92 that lead to Mo93 ground vs metastable state). Even then, in most cases the differences in the capture branching ratios between thermal and fast is pretty small.

Another factor you may want to think about is what fission product yields are being used, since these also depend on the incident neutron energy. This is controlled by the fission_yield_mode and fission_yield_opts arguments to deplete.Operator.