Experience With the SCALE Criticality Safety Cross Section Libraries

Technical Report · Mon Aug 21 00:00:00 EDT 2000

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/814461· OSTI ID:814461

Bowman, S M

This report provides detailed information on the SCALE criticality safety cross-section libraries. Areas covered include the origins of the libraries, the data on which they are based, how they were generated, past experience and validations, and performance comparisons with measured critical experiments and numerical benchmarks. The performance of the SCALE criticality safety cross-section libraries on various types of fissile systems are examined in detail. Most of the performance areas are demonstrated by examining the performance of the libraries vs critical experiments to show general trends and weaknesses. In areas where directly applicable critical experiments do not exist, performance is examined based on the general knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the cross sections. In this case, the experience in the use of the cross sections and comparisons with the results of other libraries on the same systems are relied on for establishing acceptability of application of a particular SCALE library to a particular fissile system. This report should aid in establishing when a SCALE cross-section library would be expected to perform acceptably and where there are known or suspected deficiencies that would cause the calculations to be less reliable. To determine the acceptability of a library for a particular application, the calculational bias of the library should be established by directly applicable critical experiments.

• Research Organization: ORNL Oak Ridge National Laboratory (US)
• Sponsoring Organization: Nuclear Regulatory Commission (US); USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP)
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 814461
• Report Number(s): ORNL/TM-1999/322
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS
BENCHMARKS
CRITICALITY
CROSS SECTIONS
NUCLEAR DATA COLLECTIONS
Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP)
PERFORMANCE
SAFETY