5.1.4. ORIGEN Family of Modules

This section describes how to perform the calculations and evaluations described in Sect. 5.1.3 using the ORIGEN family of modules in SCALE. These modules are summarized briefly below.

  1. The ARP module creates a new ORIGEN library by interpolating a set of existing libraries. ORIGEN libraries organized for this purpose are called ORIGEN Reactor libraries. Those distributed with SCALE are described in Sect. 5.3.

  2. The ORIGEN module is used to solve depletion, decay, activation, and feed problems described by Eq. (5.1.1), as well as the decay emission calculations described by Eq. (5.1.41). For spent fuel calculations using the ARP interpolation methodology, it may be more convenient to use ORIGAMI, as described in the ORIGAMI chapter.

  3. The OPUS module is used to perform post processing and analysis on ORIGEN results contained in ORIGEN concentrations files, including sorting, ranking, and unit conversion.

Two types of files are an integral part of the ORIGEN family of modules: the library file and the concentrations files.

  • The library file is a binary file, usually either with the complete filename “ft33f001” or with extension “.f33,” and it contains a collection of transition matrices A, usually corresponding to different burnups. It is typically called an “ORIGEN library,” “ft33,” or “f33” file.

  • The concentrations file is also a binary file, usually either with the complete filename “ft71f001” or with extension “.f71.” The f71 is a solution archive containing isotopics vectors \({\overrightarrow{N}}_{\ }\) corresponding to different materials or different points in time.

Note

A fundamental cability to create ORIGEN libraries within the ORIGEN sequence has been added to SCALE 6.3, effectively deprecating the stand-alone COUPLE module.