ISO 27468:2011 establishes an evaluation methodology for nuclear criticality safety with burnup credit. It identifies important parameters and specifies requirements, recommendations, and precautions to be taken into account in the evaluations. It also highlights the main important technical fields to ensure that the fuel composition or history considered in calculations provides a bounding value of the effective neutron multiplication factor, k_eff.

ISO 27468:2011 is applicable to transport, storage, disposal or reprocessing units implying irradiated fissile material from pressurized water reactor (PWR) fuels that initially contain uranium oxide (UOX).

Fuels irradiated in other reactors (e.g. boiling water reactors) and fuels that initially contain mixed uranium-plutonium oxide are not covered in ISO 27468:2011.

ISO 27468:2011 does not specify requirements related to overall criticality safety evaluation or eventual implementation of burnup credit.