Validation of MCNP6.1 for Criticality Safety of Pu-Metal, -Solution, and -Oxide Systems
Guidance is offered to the Los Alamos National Laboratory Nuclear Criticality Safety division towards developing an Upper Subcritical Limit (USL) for MCNP6.1 calculations with ENDF/B-VII.1 nuclear data for three classes of problems: Pu-metal, -solution, and -oxide systems. A benchmark suite containing 1,086 benchmarks is prepared, and a sensitivity/uncertainty (S/U) method with a generalized linear least squares (GLLS) data adjustment is used to reject outliers, bringing the total to 959 usable benchmarks. For each class of problem, S/U methods are used to select relevant experimental benchmarks, and the calculational margin is computed using extreme value theory. A portion of the margin of sub criticality is defined considering both a detection limit for errors in codes and data and uncertainty/variability in the nuclear data library. The latter employs S/U methods with a GLLS data adjustment to find representative nuclear data covariances constrained by integral experiments, which are then used to compute uncertainties in k eff from nuclear data. The USLs for the classes of problems are as follows: Pu metal, 0.980; Pu solutions, 0.973; dry Pu oxides, 0.978; dilute Pu oxide-water mixes, 0.970; and intermediate-spectrum Pu oxide-water mixes, 0.953.