The Activities of the International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP)

Abstract

The International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP) was initiated in 1992 by the United States Department of Energy. The ICSBEP became an official activity of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) - Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) in 1995. Representatives from the United States, United Kingdom, France, Japan, the Russian Federation, Hungary, Republic of Korea, Slovenia, Yugoslavia, Kazakhstan, Spain, and Israel are now participating. The purpose of the ICSBEP is to identify, evaluate, verify, and formally document a comprehensive and internationally peer-reviewed set of criticality safety benchmark data. The work of the ICSBEP is published as an OECD handbook entitled “International Handbook of Evaluated Criticality Safety Benchmark Experiments”. The 2001 Edition of the Handbook contains benchmark specifications for 2642 critical or subcritical configurations that are intended for use in validation efforts and for testing basic nuclear data.

Keywords:

• integral benchmark data
• criticality safety data
• nuclear data
• international project
• OECD NEA project