Student Progress Report: Summer 2012
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
The Los Alamos SOURCES 4C code has been benchmarked for alpha particle beam problems and common neutron source materials (e.g. those containing plutonium or beryllium), but little benchmarking has been performed for more exotic isotopic neutron sources or uranium mixtures. This work extends SOURCES 4C benchmarking effort. Experimental data was found in the literature for several isotopic neutron sources, namely Am/Be, Am/F, Am/B, Cm/Be, {sup 238}Pu/{sup 13}C, {sup 252}Cf, and Am/Li. SOURCES 4C simulations were run for each of these materials and the output was used to develop a source term for use in MCNP, which allowed other physical effects such as down scattering and multiplication to be accounted for. Neutron emission rate and energy spectra results were compared for these sources, generally yielding order-of-magnitude agreement for the neutron emission rate and qualitative agreement for the shape of the neutron energy spectra. An exception was the neutron energy spectrum calculated for {sup 238}Pu/{sup 13}C whose primary peak was calculated to be 1 MeV higher than was measured. The accuracy of SOURCES is highly dependent on an accurate material definition. This discrepancy is likely due to inhomogeneity of the source materials, which cannot be simulated by SOURCES or MCNP, and chemical impurities not reported by the experimentalist. The results of the Am/Li calculation demonstrate that even small impurities are capable of dramatically changing the results. The neutron emission rates of numerous uranium compounds were also calculated with SOURCES and benchmarked with experimentally determined values found in the literature. The calculated results were similar to the experimental results with less than 10% error for the following compounds: uranyl fluoride, uranyl nitrate, UO{sub 3}, UO{sub 2}F{sub 2}, UF{sub 4}, UF{sub 6}, and U-metal of less than 90% enrichment. This work demonstrates the robustness of SOURCES as a tool for calculating neutron emission rates and energy spectra.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- DOE/LANL
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC52-06NA25396
- OSTI ID:
- 1048365
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-12-23850; TRN: US1204257
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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