MCNP/KENO Criticality Benchmarks

Conference · Sun Sep 19 04:00:00 EDT 1993

OSTI ID:10142071

McKinney, G. W. ^[1]; Wagner, J. C. ^[2]; Sisolak, J. E. ^[3]

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1. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
2. Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA (United States)
3. University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States)

In the past, criticality safety analyses related to the handling and storage of fissile materials were obtained from critical experiments, nuclear safety guides, and handbooks. As a result of rising costs and time delays associated with critical experiments, most experimental facilities have been closed, triggering an increased reliance on computational methods. With this reliance comes the need and requirement for redundant validation by independent criticality codes. Currently, the KENO Monte Carlo transport code is the most widely used tool for criticality safety calculations. For other transport codes, such as MCNP, to be accepted by the criticality safety community as a redundant validation tool they must be able to reproduce experimental results at least as well as KENO. The Monte Carlo neutron, photon, and electron transport code MCNP, has an extensive list of attractive features, including continuous energy cross sections, generalized 3-D geometry, time dependent transport, criticality k_eff calculations, and comprehensive source and tally capabilities. It is widely used for nuclear criticality analysis, nuclear reactor shielding, oil well logging, and medical dosimetry calculations. This report specifically addresses criticality and benchmarks the KENO 25 problem test set. These sample problems constitute the KENO standard benchmark set and represent a relatively wide variety of criticality problems. The KENO Monte Carlo code was chosen because of its extensive benchmarking against analytical and experimental criticality results. Whereas the uncertainty in experimental parameters generally prohibits code validation to better than about 1% in k_eff, the value of k_eff for criticality is considered unacceptable if it deviates more than a few percent from measurements.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA (United States); University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP)
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-36
• OSTI ID: 10142071
• Report Number(s): LA-UR--93-757; CONF-930907--1; ON: DE93010711
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS
220100
42 ENGINEERING
420203
663610
663620
73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS
97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING
990200
BENCHMARKS
COMPUTER CALCULATIONS
CRITICALITY
CROSS SECTIONS
Criticality Safety Analyses
HANDLING EQUIPMENT AND PROCEDURES
K-Effective
M CODES
MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTERS
MONTE CARLO METHOD
Monte Carlo Transport Code
NEUTRAL-PARTICLE TRANSPORT
NEUTRON PHYSICS
NEUTRON TRANSPORT
Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP)
PHOTON TRANSPORT
PHYSICS OF RADIATIONS OTHER THAN NEUTRONS
SAFETY ANALYSIS
THEORY AND CALCULATION