Validation of Oxygen-16 Iron-56 Copper-63 and Copper-65 ENDF/B-VIII.0 Cross Section Performance in Criticality Safety Benchmarks
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Shaw, Alex
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Abstract
The ENDF/B-VII.1 nuclear data library is one of the most popular libraries used for criticality safety applications. With the 2018 release of the ENDF/B-VIII.0 revisions, performance and validation of the new library relative to ENDF/B-VII.1 is desired to determine the effects of new data on the discrepancies between calculated Monte Carlo criticality eigenvalues and documented high quality experimental criticality data from the International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project. For validation, oxygen iron and copper cross sections were selected for performance validation, due to copper's dramatic cross section changes at intermediate and fast energies, and oxygen and iron's inclusion in the Collaborative International Evaluated Library Organization project. Benchmarked critical experiments were selected based on a high total cross section energy-integrated sensitivity, a quantitative measure of the criticality impact due to a change in cross section values. In total, 102 benchmarked configurations were selected; 63 exhibiting sensitivity to Oxygen-16, 25 to Iron-56, and 32 to copper isotopes. Benchmarks were modeled in the CSAS Monte Carlo sequence of the SCALE 6.2.3 code system, using the full ENDF/B-VII.1 library, the ENDF/B-VII.1 library with ENDF/B-VIII.0 substitutions for individual isotopes of interest, and the full ENDF/B-VIII.0 library.
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2020-04-28
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