Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “ICSBEP Benchmark”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 109 records · Page 6
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2019

Verification of MCNP6.2 with ENDF/B-VIII.0 Nuclear Data for Nuclear Criticality Safety Applications

MCNP6.2 was released in 2018 and is the latest production release of MCNP ® available from RSICC. MCNP6.2 includes all of the standard features for nuclear criticality safety (NCS) calculations that have been available for the past 15 years, along with new features for sensitivity-uncertainty based methods using Whisper for NCS validation. MCNP6.2 verification using ENDF/B-VII.1 nuclear data was previously reported in. This report focuses on the initial testing and verification of MCNP6.2 using the ENDF/B-VIII.0 nuclear data that were released in 2018. The sections that follow provide guidance for NCS users on modifying existing MCNP input files to use the new ENDF/B-VIII.0 ACE nuclear data, discussion of results for several ICSBEP-based benchmark suites using MCNP6.2 with ENDF/B-VII.1 and ENDF/B-VIII.0 nuclear data.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Integral Experiment Final Design for Thermal/Epithermal eXperiments (TEX) Plutonium Additional Mixed Spectrum Configurations

This report presents the final design (CED-2) for three additional mixed-spectra configurations for plutonium Thermal/Epithermal eXperiments (TEX) to target the intermediate energy region (IER-553). The baseline cases of IER-184 (PU-MET-MIXED-002 [2]) spanned the entire fission energy spectrum. Case 3, which had a median fission energy (MFE) of approximately 6E-5 MeV and had a fission fraction of about 42% in the intermediate energy range, resulted in a $k_{eff}$ overestimation of 1.1%. Compared to 749 previous ICSBEP plutonium benchmarks, the baseline cases accurately predicted the experiments in the thermal and fast regions where the majority of benchmarks inhabit. The benchmarks in the intermediate energy region to date are sparse and overestimate $k_{eff}$ with an average C/E between 1.02 and 1.03. The additional proposed configurations span the whole of the intermediate energy region. The experimental design utilizes the plutonium/aluminum metal alloy Zero Power Physics Reactor (ZPPR) Plutonium-Aluminum No-Nickel (PANN) plates with varying polyethylene moderator thicknesses to span the intermediate fission energy region. Each of the cases have varying fractions of thermal, intermediate, and fast fissions. The designs were chosen to maximize the intermediate energy fraction. The experiment will take place on the universal critical assembly machine, Planet. The layers will be split as equally as possible between the lower platen and the upper stationary platform of Planet. The upper half of the experimental configuration will also have an upper reflector of polyethylene of specified thicknesses to achieve criticality when the lower platen is raised fully. The previous IER-184 configurations, specifically Case 3, were used to determine the configurations for the additional experiments and neutronics calculations were used to fine-tune the configurations to ensure criticality. The quadrature sum uncertainty in Δ$k_{eff}$ for Case 3 in PU-MET-MIXED-002 was found to be 0.00219. Section 3.8 gives a detailed description of the uncertainties calculated. The additional configurations, which are based directly on Case 3, are expected to have similar uncertainties. However, it is possible to reduce the overall uncertainty of Δ$k_{eff}$ for the additional configurations using the knowledge obtained from the calculations in the benchmark.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2025

IER 516 - Zirconium Test Assembly (ZTA) Preliminary Experimental Design [Slides]

Zirconium present in large quantities in criticality safety applications such as fuel manufacturing and processing facilities, and in commercial thermal nuclear reactors. ICSBEP lacks benchmarks optimized for zirconium sensitivity to validate zirconium evaluations. Evaluators lack isotopic differential nuclear data in regions of high importance to fission systems.

K-PSO 2.0↗
DOE OSTI2025

Lilith: An Enduring Plutonium Critical Assembly [Slides]

A design of an enduring Pu critical assembly has been produced. This is very important to DOE/NNSA missions. This assembly would result in advances/improvements in nuclear data validation, analytical methods validation, dosimetry, reactor kinetics, materials, and more.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2025

ORNL Testing of Multiple Graphite Benchmarks [Slides]

Integral criticality safety and reactor physics benchmark experiments from the International Handbook of Evaluated Criticality Safety Benchmark Experiments (ICSBEP Handbook) and the International Handbook of Reactor Physics Experiments (IRPhE Handbook) are essential for nuclear data validation and testing

ENDF↗
DOE OSTI2017

Evaluation of the neutron induced reactions on 235 U from 2.25 keV up to 30 MeV

An evaluation of fast neutron induced reactions on 235 U is performed in the 2.25 keV–30 MeV incident energyrangewiththecodeEMPIRE–3.2Malta,combinedwithselectedexperimentaldata.Thereactionmodelincludes a dispersive optical model potential (RIPL 2408) that couples seven levels of the ground-state rotational band and a triple-humped fission barrier with absorption in the wells described within the optical model for fission. EGSM nuclear level densities are used in Hauser-Feshbach calculations of the compound-nuclear decay. The starting values for the modelparameters are retrievedfrom the RIPL-3 data-base. Excellentagreementis achievedwithavailable experimental data for neutron emission, neutron capture and fission, which gives confidence that the quantities for which there is no experimental information are also predicted accurately. In the fast neutron region of the evaluated file, the fission cross section is taken from Neutron Standards, and neutron capture includes fluctuations observed in recent experiments. Other channels are taken directly from model calculations. New evaluation is validated against ICSBEP criticality benchmarks with fast neutron spectra with excellent results.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Validation of KENO Thermal Moderator Doppler Broadening Method in SCALE 6.2 Beta5 Using Continuous-Energy B-VII.1 Library

KENO, the Monte Carlo criticality safety program within the SCALE code package, has until recently used continuous-energy (CE) cross sections corresponding to the set of evaluated nuclear data closest to the temperature of interest. This method, which is used for both 1-D cross sections and thermal scattering probability data, does not fully represent the phenomenon of Doppler broadening (DB) and can result in significant differences in eigenvalues when the material temperature lies between the evaluated data sets. A method for creating temperature-dependent nuclear data has been implemented in KENO for CE calculations. This work summarizes the results of incorporating this method into two critical experiments using low-enriched uranium (LEU) in light water moderated pin lattices. The LEUCOMP-THERM-046 (LCT-046) experiment is a benchmark documented in the International Handbook of Evaluated Criticality Safety Benchmark Experiments (ICSBEP Handbook); it consists of 22 critical configurations or cases. The KRITZ-2:1 experiment, a part of the International Reactor Physics Experiment Evaluation Project (IRPhEP), consists of two cases which span a significant range of moderator temperatures. The results of this work give a good indication of the value of the newly incorporated cross section processing. However, more diverse evaluations should be performed to provide a broader validation of this method. The results suggest that when dealing with systems similar to LCT-046, there is a significant improvement made when the moderator scattering data are properly broadened and sampled. The DB of the hydrogen (in water) 2-D cross sections resulted in a consistent C/E value across the temperature range, whereas the DB of the 1-D only cross sections did not exhibit this improvement. With respect to criticality safety, this consistency adds precision to the calculational method, which could potentially impact subcriticality limits. After comparing the KRITZ and LCT-046 results, the most plausible conclusion to make as to why the added thermal moderator treatment improved the results for LCT-046 and not for the KRITZ experiment is that the two systems were dissimilar with respect to their temperatures. That is, the relative temperature differences among the cases in each experiment are more significant for LCT-046 than for KRITZ. The cross section changes as a function of temperature are also smaller at higher temperatures. This difference resulted in a lesser impact of broadening in general for the KRITZ hot case.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2014

TRIPOLI-4{sup R} version 9 Shielding for the Shielding Community: Overview, Relevant Benchmarking for Shielding and Licensing Policy - Paper 49

This is a review paper of the Shielding only version of TRIPOLI-4. TRIPOLI-4 and TRIPOLI-4 S: TRIPOLI{sup R} represents a family of radiation transport codes using the Monte Carlo method (1,2). It has been continuously developed at CEA since the mid 60's. TRIPOLI-4{sup R}, being the fourth generation, has been developed starting from the mid 90's in C++. It tracks neutrons from 20 MeV down to 10{sup -5} eV, photons, electrons and positrons from 100 MeV to 1 keV, in 3D arbitrary geometries either in TRIPOLI{sup R} proprietary format or ROOT(4) format. It reads its continuous energy nuclear data from any evaluation in ENDF format, including but not limited to JEFF-3.1.1 and ENDF/BVII.0. It has various simulation modes, fixed-source (with or without fission), criticality, or both of them chained. A variety of tallies are available: averaged flux in a volume (track length and collision estimators), surface flux and current, point flux, reaction rates, deposited energy, dpa, pka, gamma spectroscopy, mesh tallies, tallies for criticality (k{sub eff}, beta eff, kinetic parameters). It provides the user with embedded response functions from IRDF and EAF as well. Several variance reduction techniques (3), including automated ones, make it particularly suitable to deep penetration problems (implicit capture, Russian roulette, exponential biasing with automatic estimation of the importance map). It may run in parallel, on single multi-core machines as well as heterogeneous networks of stations or massively parallel machines. It comes with productivity tools designed to speed-up the elaboration and verification of the input deck as well as the output analysis: 2D interactive display of geometry; 2D display of mesh tallies and collision sites; 3D input deck modeler; compatibility with ROOT tools to post-process TRIPOLI{sup R} outputs. Its V and V test base is made of more than 1000 internationally accepted benchmarks from ICSBEP and SINBAD (REPLICA, ASPIS, NESDIP) and covers all its application domains, including several shielding cases which will be detailed in the talk. TRIPOLI-4{sup R} is the reference Monte Carlo code for CEA, EDF, and also for AREVA for a number of applications. A 'Shielding-only' version has been designed to specifically answer the needs of the shielding community. It is distributed through the NEA Databank with a license for R and D, covering the fusion applications, whose terms are detailed in the paper.

61 RADIATION PROTECTION AND DOSIMETRY↗
DOE OSTI2022

3D spherical functional expansion tallies in Serpent 2 Monte Carlo code

This work extends the application of functional expansion tallies to 3D spherical geometries. The 3D Zernike polynomials are set as an orthonormal polynomials basis for the functional reconstruction. The study describes the construction of the complete set of polynomials, a natural expansion of the spherical harmonics polynomials where 3D Zernike moments can be evaluated as a linear combination of the geometrical moments. The 3D Zernike polynomials formulation and the computational approach implemented in Serpent 2 are presented and tested through the Godiva model from the ICSBEP criticality benchmark test cases. The implementation results are in agreement with a reference solution described in a fine-resolution mesh, enhancing also the performance and memory demand. (authors)

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Status of the International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project

The International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP) has continued its work generating evaluations of new and historical criticality benchmark experiments since the last update to the nuclear criticality safety community at the 11th International Conference on Nuclear Criticality Safety (ICNC 2019) in Paris, France. Three additional versions of the ICSBEP Handbook have been published since that update, and the Technical Review Group (TRG) held two in-person (in 2019 and 2023) and three virtual (2020 and 2021) meetings to review and approve additional benchmarks. The 2019 edition of the ICSBEP Handbook included five new evaluations with 79 new configurations, the 2020 version of the ICSBEP Handbook contained five new evaluations totaling 76 new configurations, and the 2021 version of the ICSBEP handbook contained five new evaluations with a total of 57 different configurations. The ICSBEP TRG met in October and December 2021, to review benchmarks for potential inclusion in the 2022 ICSBEP Handbook, with seven evaluations receiving provisional approval pending resolution of review group comments. Final comment resolution for some of these evaluations is currently underway and handbook publication should be completed soon. The ICSBEP TRG met again in person in April 2023 to review benchmarks for the 2023 ICSBEP Handbook, provisionally approving 7 new evaluations. The ICSBEP continues to deliver high-quality, peer reviewed evaluations of experiments relevant to the nuclear criticality safety community.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Preliminary Design of Critical Experiments Involving Commercially Available B 4 C Neutron Absorber Plates with Low-Enriched UO 2 Fuel

The International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP) is an initiative to provide high-quality benchmark data in a standardized format for criticality safety analysts to use to validate calculational tools and nuclear data. In the last released 2022 version, the ICSBEP handbook contains over 5,000 critical experiment descriptions, results, and associated models. This paper describes the critical configurations proposed and calculations performed as part of the conceptual design phase of Integral Experiment Request (IER) 554 (IER-554). The goal of IER-554 is to add to the benchmark experiments available to the criticality safety community by designing critical experiments that can analyze how adding commercially available Boralcan plates to an assembly of low-enriched UO2 fuel rods affects the effective neutron multiplication factor (k eff ). Boralcan, a neutron absorber product developed by Rio Tinto, is made of B4C in an Al 1100 matrix and is commonly used for criticality suppression in fuel storage pools. In the current version of the ICSBEP handbook, only a few dated critical experiments involve B4C materials, and none involve Boralcan in a thin plate shape. The experiments designed as part of IER-554 are intended to be performed at the Sandia Pulsed Reactor Facility/Critical Experiments (SPRF/CX) apparatus at Sandia National Laboratories. SPRF/CX is a well-characterized assembly considered trustworthy by the benchmarking community because of the numerous high-quality evaluations with very low experimental uncertainties included in the ICSBEP handbook. Figure 1 illustrates the assembly for a particular configuration from LCT-078, one of the published benchmarks in the ICSBEP handbook. The experiments will be moderated and reflected by light water at ambient atmospheric pressure. Before the plates are inserted in the critical assembly, they will be characterized with x-ray computed tomography (XCT) to identify the sizes and distribution of the B 4 C powder particles inside the plates. The preliminary design calculations were performed with SCALE 6.3.0 using the KENO V.a sequence for the criticality calculations, the CE-TSUNAMI-3D sequence for the sensitivity and uncertainty studies, and the ENDF/B-VII.1 Continuous Energy cross section library. All the calculation results presented have 10 pcm statistical uncertainties. A set of critical experiments with Boralcan plates could increase the confidence of the criticality safety community in its modeling methods when using this type of neutron absorber material. Experiments would also help validate k eff calculations, and the industry could use these validations to change the B loading credit limits from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission standard review plan for dry cask storage of spent nuclear fuel. This paper summarizes only part of the analysis documented in the preliminary design report.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2019

Jupiter: A Proposed Benchmark for Lead Void Worth with Plutonium

In the summer of 2017, a series of measurements were performed at the National Criticality Experiments Research Center (NCERC) in collaboration with the Japanese Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) to measure the reactivity worth of voids in an array of lead and plutonium. This experiment, called Jupiter, measured multiple configurations of an array of aluminum boxes containing plutonium, aluminum, and lead plates. For some configurations, a selection of the lead interstitial plates were swapped with aluminum spacer frames to create “voids” in the lead interstitial material. Comparing the excess reactivity of the systems provides an empirical value of the lead void reactivity worth. These measurements were part of a larger collaboration to measure lead void reactivity worth with multiple nuclear material types and enrichments. This included other measurement series with both highly-enriched uranium (HEU), and a mixture of HEU and natural uranium to simulate low-enriched uranium (LEU). These data sets will be useful to the JAEA for a potential lead-bismuth cooled accelerator driven system. Additionally, there are not very many benchmarks in the International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP) handbook sensitive to lead cross sections. Given that lead is widely used as a radiation shield and is part of new reactor designs, having more benchmarks in the ICSBEP handbook to better support cross section validation is important. Additional integral experiments could also aid in determining whether improvements have been made in new lead cross section evaluations. A benchmark evaluation for this experiment is being proposed in order to help fulfill these needs. Such evaluations contain both measured data, results from detailed transport code models, and analyses of the uncertainties associated with each. Examples of these uncertainties include the uncertainty in the measured excess reactivity, the composition of components, or their positioning within the model. This means it is easier to make comparisons between the measured and simulated data and better understand where improvements can be made to nuclear data.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Application of the Rossi-alpha method to simulations of HEU and organic scintillators

The International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP) Handbook contains thousands of high-quality benchmark measurements that include detailed descriptions of experiment designs and exhaustive accounting of uncertainties. These benchmarks are used extensively by the criticality safety and nuclear data communities. A subcritical benchmark involving bare, highly enriched uranium (HEU) has yet to be accepted to the handbook. The Measurement of Uranium Subcritical and Critical (MUSiC) was proposed to address this gap. MUSiC will be performed at the National Criticality Experiments Research Center (NCERC) and will leverage bare HEU hemisphere shells that can be assembled in a variety of configurations. The measurement has the following key benefits: it will be the first set of fast, subcritical measurements of HEU to be submitted to ICSBEP; ten configurations will be measured spanning from nearly no multiplication to critical (e.g., it is a measurement of similar systems with different re activities); measurements of an all-HEU system will be of value for nuclear data validation, providing results that assist in determining biases in both measurements and simulations. A variety of detector systems will be used including a Neutron Multiplicity Array Detector (NoMAD) system (similar to the MC-15), four small volume 0.635 cm (#8960;) × 7.59 cm 3He detectors (ideal for measuring prompt neutron decay constants due to their fast recovery speed), and an array of eight 5.08 cm (#8960;) × 5.08 cm EJ-309 organic scintillator detectors. The focus of this work is the simulation of the subcritical MUSiC configurations including the EJ-309 detectors and the application of the Rossi-α method. The EJ-309 organic scintillator detector array is a new detection system that will be deployed at NCERC. Organic scintillators are ideal for measurements of fast, subcritical systems due to their short time response on the order of nanoseconds.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2025

Status of the International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project

The International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP) has continued its work generating evaluations of new and historical benchmark experiments since the last update to the nuclear criticality safety (NCS) community at the 12th International Conference on Nuclear Criticality Conference held in 2023. One additional version of the ICSBEP Handbook has been published since that update, and the Technical Review Group (TRG) held two in-person meetings to review and approve additional benchmarks. The 2022 and 2023 editions of the handbook were combined into one release (published in November 2024) and contained 13 new evaluations with 46 different configurations and two major revisions to existing evaluations. The 2024 version of the handbook, currently under publication review, will contain two new evaluations with 15 new configurations and one major revision to HEU-MET-FAST-028, the evaluation of Flattop with a uranium core. The ICSBEP TRG met again in person in April 2025 to review benchmarks for the 2025 ICSBEP Handbook and final comment resolution is currently ongoing. Many of the new benchmarks represent contemporaneous experiments that have been specifically optimized to provide validation cases relevant to the NCS community. One major area of focus for new critical experiments is to target the sparsely populated intermediate energy (or resonance) region. Another focus of many of the new benchmarks is to provide experiments sensitive to different materials, such as chlorine, hafnium, tantalum, titanium, molybdenum, chromium, and polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA, or Lucite). The ICSBEP continues to deliver high-quality, peer reviewed evaluations of integral experiments relevant to the nuclear data community.

HEU-MET-FAST-028↗
DOE OSTI2025

Final Design for Additional Thermal/Epithermal eXperiments (TEX) with Sodium Chloride Absorbers to Provide Validation Benchmarks for TerraPower

The first set of Thermal/Epithermal eXperiments (TEX) with chlorine absorbers (TEX-Cl) were executed in Q4FY24 and are in the process of being benchmarked for the ICSBEP. TEX-Cl builds upon the TEX-HEU baseline cases that were published in the 2022 International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP) Handbook. TEX-HEU, like TEX-Pu, was designed to be modular to allow for the incorporation of various absorbers and reflectors to test nuclear data and application case needs. For example, TEX-HEU with hafnium (TEX-Hf) utilizes hafnium plates as both absorbers and reflectors, depending on the tested configuration. A second set of chlorine experiments, dubbed More TEX-Cl, are laid out in this report to meet the needs of TerraPower for chlorine validation for their Molten Chloride Fast Reactor (MCFR) systems. TerraPower’s Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment (MCRE) and MCFR are fast molten salt reactors that utilize sodium chloride (NaCl) salt eutectics as the fuel and coolant. The MCRE eutectic is a mixture of NaCl and uranium trichloride (UCl 3 ). An abundant need for chlorine absorption validation has been expressed by multiple members of the community, including Y-12 (whose needs were addressed with the first set of experiments), LANL (whose needs were addressed with the Chlorine Worth Study (CWS)), TerraPower, institute de radioprotection et de sûreté nucléaire (IRSN), Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SNRS), and others. Of the members who have expressed interest in this validation, most are interested in the fast neutron energy region, where the 35 Cl(n,p) reaction is most prominent. New 35 Cl(n,p) differential cross section measurements performed by LANL at LANCSE show substantial changes to the cross sections (Figure 1) and may be validated through these experiments as some configurations are optimally sensitive to this cross section.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Validation of MCNP Critical Benchmark Models of PU-MET-FAST-016

A new centralized repository of high-quality MCNP models of critical benchmark experiments is currently under development at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The repository is the combined effort of the Nuclear Criticality Safety, Nuclear Data, and Monte Carlo code development/application organizations at LANL. The initial set of benchmark models in the repository are derived from the Whisper Suite provided with MCNP6.2 and are evaluated against the benchmark experiments described in the International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP) Handbook. The goal is to build a single LANL benchmark collection that is up to date with the latest ICSBEP revision, has a formal review and revision process, is contained in an open-source repository, and utilizes new Python tools for improved input and output file review. This paper describes the validation of the models associated with PU-MET-FAST-016, “Flooded 3X3X3 Arrays of 3-kg Plutonium (Pu) Metal Cylinders – Phase I”. In this critical experiment, twenty-seven 3-kg Pu metal cylinders with a height of 46.33 ± 0.15 mm and diameter of 65.25 ± 0.05 mm were arranged in a cubic array. The Pu cylinders were sealed in aluminum cans, and three cans were placed in each of nine perforated aluminum sleeves, as shown in Fig. 1. The nine sleeves were supported by an aluminum frame that allowed for control of the lateral spacing of the cylinders, both in the X and Y directions. The benchmark experiment measured thirteen configurations. Of these configurations, six were modeled using MCNP.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2016

The Paucity Problem: Where Have All the Space Reactor Experiments Gone?

The Handbooks of the International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP) and the International Reactor Physics Experiment Evaluation Project (IRPhEP) together contain a plethora of documented and evaluated experiments essential in the validation of nuclear data, neutronics codes, and modeling of various nuclear systems. Unfortunately, only a minute selection of handbook data (twelve evaluations) are of actual experimental facilities and mockups designed specifically for space nuclear research. There is a paucity problem, such that the multitude of space nuclear experimental activities performed in the past several decades have yet to be recovered and made available in such detail that the international community could benefit from these valuable historical research efforts. Those experiments represent extensive investments in infrastructure, expertise, and cost, as well as constitute significantly valuable resources of data supporting past, present, and future research activities. The ICSBEP and IRPhEP were established to identify and verify comprehensive sets of benchmark data; evaluate the data, including quantification of biases and uncertainties; compile the data and calculations in a standardized format; and formally document the effort into a single source of verified benchmark data. See full abstract in attached document.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Preliminary Chlorine Worth Study Benchmark Evaluation

The Chlorine Worth Studies (CWS) experiments with polyvinyl chloride (PVC with chemical formula (C 2 H 3 Cl) n ), chlorinated polyvinyl chloride (CPVC with chemical formula (C 9 H 11 Cl 7 ) n ), and high density polyethylene (HDPE with chemical formula (CH 2 ) n ) were a series of measurements performed at the National Criticality Experiments Research Center (NCERC). The purpose of the CWS experiments was to perform integral experiments that were highly sensitive to the thermal 35 Cl(n,γ) reaction and matched the sensitivities of aqueous chloride operations at the plutonium facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The CWS experiments were performed on the Planet critical assembly machine at NCERC and utilized weapons grade plutonium (WGPu) plates as fuel. The design process and design of the CWS experiment were discussed previously. This paper discusses the benchmark evaluation of the experiment, intended for the International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP). Criticality calculations were performed with MCNP version 6.3. Results presented here are preliminary, as the benchmark has not yet been submitted to the ICSBEP.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗