Evaluation of PNL30-35 Critical Experiments on ICSBEP

The International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP) is under way for the purpose identifying, evaluating, and compiling benchmark critical experiment data into a standardized format that allows criticality analysts to easily use the data to validate calculational methods and cross sections. As part of this activity, PNL30-35 experiments, which had been adopted as benchmark problems by CSEWG in 1970s, were reevaluated, which results in some additions and modifications: changes in fuel number density, modification to the experimental keff, modifications to the soluble boron concentration for PNL-31, and addition of an uncertainty in the benchmark-model k$_{eff}$./.