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- Helgesson, Petter, 1986-, et al.
(författare)
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Uncertainty driven nuclear data evaluation including thermal (n,alpha) applied to Ni-59
- 2017
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Ingår i: Nuclear Data Sheets. - : Elsevier BV. - 0090-3752 .- 1095-9904. ; 145, s. 1-24
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper presents a novel approach to the evaluation of nuclear data (ND), combining experimental data for thermalcross sections with resonance parameters and nuclear reaction modeling. The method involves sampling of variousuncertain parameters, in particular uncertain components in experimental setups, and provides extensive covarianceinformation, including consistent cross-channel correlations over the whole energy spectrum. The method is developed for, and applied to, Ni-59, but may be used as a whole, or in part, for other nuclides. Ni-59 is particularly interesting since a substantial amount of Ni-59 is produced in thermal nuclear reactors by neutron capture in Ni-58 and since it has a non-threshold (n,α) cross section. Therefore, Ni-59 gives a very important contribution to the helium production in stainless steel in a thermal reactor. However, current evaluated ND libraries contain old information for Ni-59, without any uncertainty information. The work includes a study of thermal cross section experiments and a novel combination of this experimental information, giving the full multivariate distribution of the thermal cross sections. In particular, the thermal (n,α) cross section is found to be (12.7 ± .7) b. This is consistent with, but yet different from, current established values. Further, the distribution of thermal cross sections is combined with reported resonance parameters, and with TENDL-2015 data, to provide full random ENDF files; all this is done in a novel way, keeping uncertainties and correlations in mind. The random files are also condensed into one single ENDF file with covariance information, which is now part ofa beta version of JEFF 3.3.Finally, the random ENDF files have been processed and used in an MCNP model to study the helium productionin stainless steel. The increase in the (n,α) rate due to Ni-59 compared to fresh stainless steel is found to be a factor of 5.2 at a certain time in the reactor vessel, with a relative uncertainty due to the Ni-59 data of 5.4 %.
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| 2. |
- Rochman, D., et al.
(författare)
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Nuclear Data Uncertainties for Typical LWR Fuel Assemblies and a Simple Reactor Core
- 2017
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Ingår i: Nuclear Data Sheets. - : Elsevier BV. - 0090-3752 .- 1095-9904. ; 139, s. 1-76
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Abstract The impact of the current nuclear data library covariances such as in ENDF/B-VII.1, JEFF-3.2, JENDL-4.0, SCALE and TENDL, for relevant current reactors is presented in this work. The uncertainties due to nuclear data are calculated for existing PWR and BWR fuel assemblies (with burn-up up to 40 GWd/tHM, followed by 10 years of cooling time) and for a simplified PWR full core model (without burn-up) for quantities such as k ∞ , macroscopic cross sections, pin power or isotope inventory. In this work, the method of propagation of uncertainties is based on random sampling of nuclear data, either from covariance files or directly from basic parameters. Additionally, possible biases on calculated quantities are investigated such as the self-shielding treatment. Different calculation schemes are used, based on CASMO, SCALE, DRAGON, MCNP or FISPACT-II, thus simulating real-life assignments for technical-support organizations. The outcome of such a study is a comparison of uncertainties with two consequences. One: although this study is not expected to lead to similar results between the involved calculation schemes, it provides an insight on what can happen when calculating uncertainties and allows to give some perspectives on the range of validity on these uncertainties. Two: it allows to dress a picture of the state of the knowledge as of today, using existing nuclear data library covariances and current methods.
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