Analysis of Major Benchmark Uncertainties for Fast Metal Assemblies in the ICSBEP Handbook

Abstract

The International Handbook of Evaluated Criticality Safety Benchmark Experiments includes thousands of criticality safety benchmark configurations that have been collected since the early 1990s. Their quality and uncertainty analysis have greatly expanded over the years, as computer codes have also expanded and accelerated. Along with the increase in effort required for benchmarks today, the cost of performing experiments has also gone up. This paper evaluates plutonium fast metal and highly enriched uranium fast metal experiments for their major uncertainty contributions and identifies where to focus efforts in future experiment design.

Keywords:

• Benchmark
• plutonium
• uncertainty
• integral experiment

Acknowledgments

Research reported in this publication was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Laboratory Directed Research and Development program at LANL. NCERC is supported by the DOE Nuclear Criticality Safety Program, funded and managed by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) for the DOE. Work at LANL was carried out under the auspices of the NNSA of the DOE under contract 89233218CNA000001.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Los Alamos National Laboratory [89233218CNA000001].