Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Arthur, Jennifer Ann.
The verification of U233-COMP-THERM-004 contributed to the LANL centralized repository that’s currently under development. Revisions made to the MCNP model were statistically significant. Magnitude of bias is relatively small in comparison to other uranium benchmark biases and thus will likely have not a significant effect on the USL.
The National Criticality Experiments Research Center (NCERC) located at the Device Assembly Facility (DAF) at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) and operated by Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is home to four critical assemblies which are used to support of range of missions, including nuclear criticality safety and nuclear nonproliferation. Additionally, subcritical systems can also be assembled at NCERC. NCERC is providing critical and subcritical experiments valuable to the nuclear data community and experiments performed at NCERC are often published as benchmarks in the International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP) Handbook. This manuscript will give a broad overview of recent experiments performed at NCERC, upcoming experiments, and why integral measurements are important and useful to the nuclear data community. The four critical assemblies are GODIVA IV, FLATTOP, COMET, and PLANET. GODIVA IV is a cylindrical metal fast burst reactor, the fourth in the GODIVA series that dates back to the 1950’s. FLATTOP is an highly enriched uranium (HEU) or Pu core reflected by natural uranium. COMET and PLANET are vertical lift assemblies, where one half of the reactor can be lifted to the upper half of the reactor to create a critical system. Some recent experiments include various critical intermediate energy assemblies with lead, and subcritical measurements of plutonium reflected by copper, tungsten, and nickel. Work is also underway to make a better measurement of the critical mass of neptunium, using a neptunium sphere surrounded by nickel shells. Additionally, measurements will be performed next year with HEU shells from Rocky Flats. These HEU shells will be stacked together to make larger systems, allowing for a large range of criticality (from subcritical to delayed critical). Other upcoming measurements include an HEU critical assembly sensitive to intermediate energy neutrons.
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No abstract provided.
Part I of this work presented an uncertainty approach which incorporates the singles and doubles counting rates determined by the Hage-Cifarelli formalism of the Feynman Variance-to-Mean method. This moments-based approach utilizes time correlations between prompt neutrons detections to assess the system multiplication. Additionally, it presented a validation which utilized simulated data generated using a 0-D point-kinetics Monte Carlo code. In Part II, this same method and validation approach is applied to measured data of a subcritical benchmark experiment. These measurements were performed with a 4.5 kg sphere of alpha-phase weapons grade plutonium reflected by copper and/or polyethylene. Finally, the results of 17 configurations are shown including detailed validation for four of the configurations.
Subcritical neutron noise measurements are often used to determine multiplication of a system with Special Nuclear Material. This work presents an uncertainty approach which incorporates the singles and doubles counting rates determined by the Hage-Cifarelli formalism. This is a moments-based approach which utilizes time correlations between prompt neutrons in order to assess the system multiplication. After the method is described, a validation is presented which utilizes simulated data generated using a 0-D point-kinetics Monte Carlo code.
No abstract provided.