Benchmarking of Stainless Steel Cube Neutron Leakage in Research Center Rez

Abstract

Integral experiments covering neutron leakage from geometrically simple assemblies with a ²⁵²Cf source inside are very valuable tools usable in the validation of transport cross-section data since geometric uncertainties play a much smaller role in simple geometric assemblies than in complex assemblies as for example reactor pressure vessel geometry. Since ²⁵²Cf spontaneous fission is a standard neutron source, the uncertainties connected with the source neutron spectrum can be even neglected. The paper refers to validation efforts of neutron leakage from an ~50 × 50 × 50-cm stainless steel block in the Research Center Rez. Both the neutron leakage flux at a distance of 1 m from the center of the cubical assembly using stilbene spectrometry and activation rates at different positions of the assembly were evaluated. In addition to experiments, main sources of uncertainty were identified and evaluated. The results of the stilbene measurements are consistent with the activation measurement results.

Keywords:

• Neutron spectrometry
• neutron transport in steel
• activation detectors in steel
• MCNP6

Acknowledgments

The presented results were obtained with the use of the infrastructure reactors LVR-15 and LR-0, which are financially supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, project LM2018120, and by the SANDA project funded under H2020-EURATOM-1.1 contract 847552.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the H2020 Euratom [847552]; Ministerstvo Školství, Mládeže a Tělovýchovy [LM 2023041].