Izvestiya vuzov. Yadernaya Energetika

The peer-reviewed scientific and technology journal. ISSN: 0204-3327

Verification of neutron data for main reactor materials from ROSFOND neutron data library on intergral experiments

5/29/2014 2014 - #01 Physics and technology of nuclear reactors

Koscheev V.N. Manturov G.N. Nikolaev M.N. Tsiboulya A.M.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.26583/npe.2014.1.15

UDC: 621.039.51.17

Recently almost all the available in the world evaluated neutron data libraries, as ENDF/B-VII in the USA, JEFF-3.1 in EU, JENDL-4 in Japan , CENDL-4 in China and RUSFOND in Russia have been essentially updated. These libraries are currently are being strongly tested for its preferable use in applications. As a rule, testing of neutron data libraries is widely performed through calculations of criticality for specially selected benchmark models from ICSBEP Handbook. Other sources of information for neutron data testing are also available. They are: one-group cross-sections obtained by weighting with standard fission spectra, and cross-sections for neutron removal to the sub-threshold region for a reaction used as a detector: fission into 238U and 237Np or (n, p)reaction to27Al. The results of neutron data testing for the main fuel reactor materials 238U, 237U, 239Pu along with traditional criticality calculations of selected benchmark models are presented in the paper.

At the first stage the neutron data for 235U, 238U, 239Pu (resonance integrals, one-group cross-sections, cross-sections for neutron removal to the sub-threshold region) fromfour modern data libraries ENDF/B-VII.1, JEFF-3.1.1, JENDL-4.0 and RUSFOND were compared with experimental data. At the second stage of verification the neutron data were verified in criticality calculations of selected sets of benchmark experiments from ICSBEP Handbook. The benchmark experiments selection criteria were: benchmark model simplicity, hydrogen to fuel ratio representativeness, description completeness. Benchmark models were selected both for fast and thermal neutron spectra regions. The list of benchmark models includes 62 configurations with high enriched uranium and 49 models with low enriched uranium fuel, and 102 models with plutonium fuel as well.

The performed verification demonstrates good concordance of the accepted evaluations for 235U, 238U and 239Pu in RUSFOND-2010 data library with results of wide range experiments. The procedure of successive neutron data testing through integral micro-experiments and further verification of data in criticality calculations of selected benchmark configurations from ICSBEP Handbook allows to estimatethe quality of neutron data for its further use in scientific and design calculations of nuclear energy installations.

It is proposed to extend the list of experiments and attract benchmark experiments from international IRPhE Handbook of reactor physics experiments, including experiments performed in IPPE on fast physical stand BFS for further RUSFOND data verification.

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evaluation nuclear data files ROSFOND verification benchmark-model

Link for citing the article: Koscheev V.N., Manturov G.N., Nikolaev M.N., Tsiboulya A.M. Verification of neutron data for main reactor materials from ROSFOND neutron data library on intergral experiments. Izvestiya vuzov. Yadernaya Energetika. 2014, no. 1, pp. 204-214; DOI: https://doi.org/10.26583/npe.2014.1.15 (in Russian).

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