Nuclear Data Sensitivity/Uncertainty Studies of Tantalum-Reflected Systems

Conference · Tue Jun 18 04:00:00 EDT 2024

OSTI ID:2349298

Hutchinson, J. ^[1]; Bulso, R. ^[1]; Cutler, T. ^[1]; Kleedtke, N. ^[1]; Little, R. ^[1]; Michaud, I. ^[1]; Rising, M. ^[1]

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1. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

Tantalum (Ta) is a refractory metal with high melting point and high corrosion resistance. This makes it useful as a mold material for plutonium casting operations. Unfortunately, there are few criticality benchmarks with high nuclear data sensitivities. Given that, it is desirable to design new experiments to provide additional validation data for nuclear criticality safety, which is the objective of the Thales project. Multiple application models were used to represent process conditions (either normal conditions or credible upset conditions) both at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and Savannah River Site (SRS). A total of 40 application models were obtained. Given this, it was useful to down-select the number of needed application models. This work documents the down-selection based on several nuclear data sensitivity/uncertainty metrics. In addition to showing the result of the specific down-selection used for the Thales project, this work discusses potential ways to represent a large number of application models with a smaller number of proposed experiment designs.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP)
• DOE Contract Number: 89233218CNA000001
• OSTI ID: 2349298
• Report Number(s): LA-UR--24-20382
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

42 ENGINEERING
Application Models
Casting Operations
Experiment Designs
Integral Experiment
Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP)
Tantalum (Ta)