Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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An inter-comparison between ENDF/B-VIII.0-NECP-Atlas and ENDF/B-VIII.0-NJOY results for criticality safety benchmarks and benchmarks on the reactivity temperature coefficient

  • Kabach, Ouadie (Mohammed V University, Faculty of Science, Nuclear Reactor and Nuclear Security Group Energy Centre, Physics Department) ;
  • Chetaine, Abdelouahed (Mohammed V University, Faculty of Science, Nuclear Reactor and Nuclear Security Group Energy Centre, Physics Department) ;
  • Benchrif, Abdelfettah (National Centre for Nuclear Energy, Sciences and Technology (CNESTEN)) ;
  • Amsil, Hamid (Mohammed V University, Faculty of Science, Nuclear Reactor and Nuclear Security Group Energy Centre, Physics Department)
  • Received : 2020.04.12
  • Accepted : 2021.02.12
  • Published : 2021.08.25
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Abstract

Since the nuclear data forms a vital component in reactor physics computations, the nuclear community needs processing codes as tools for translating the Evaluated Nuclear Data Files (ENDF) to simulate nuclear-related problems such as an ACE format that is used for MCNP. Errors, inaccuracies or discrepancies in library processing may lead to a calculation that disagrees with the experimentally measured benchmark. This paper provides an overview of the processing and preparation of ENDF/B-VIII.0 incident neutron data with NECP-Atlas and NJOY codes for implementation in the MCNP code. The resulting libraries are statistically inter-compared and tested by conducting benchmark calculations, as the mutualcomparison is a source of strong feedback for further improvements in processing procedures. The database of the benchmark experiments is based on a selection taken from the International Handbook of Evaluated Criticality Safety Benchmark Experiments (ICSBEP handbook) and those proposed by Russell D. Mosteller. In general, there is quite good agreement between the NECP-Atlas1.2 and NJOY21(1.0.0.json) results with no substantial differences, if the correct input parameters are used.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

The authors acknowledge gratefully Professor Tiejun Zu and the NECP-Atlas code developers at Xi'an Jiaotong University in China for providing NECP-Atlas code for this work. The authors also wish to thank the members of the Nuclear Reactor and Nuclear Security Group Energy Centre (Mohamed V University Rabat, Morocco) for their support, helpful suggestions and discussions.

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