Normalization Factor

[Jarret]

I am running a depletion simulation on a quarter-core representation of a CANDU reactor, it has reflective conditions on the y and x directions, therefore making it representative of a full-core simulation. I am completing this simulation to gather the reaction rates of 4 different isotopes within the reactor, with the tallies being gathered within each individual fuel material which is limited to each bundle. Therefore, in the end I will have reaction rates of each bundle over the entire fuel cycle of a CANDU. These are required to be normalized and I have a few questions about this process. The first is whether the power that needs to be used should be 1/4 the power of my overall reactor power (I saw this recommended somewhere in the forums), though I don’t think this is correct as the flux over my bundles would be for a full-core, therefore I think I should use full power. Furthermore, when normalizing a full-core simulation, is measuring the heating over the entire reactor still the best for calculating the normalization factor, I would figure each channel or even bundle would have a separate heating factor, though this might be one of those situations where you could always be more accurate but for one reason or another choose to use the simplified method. Any insight into this would be appreciated, thanks in advance for your assistance.