Program - Brookhaven National Laboratory

Session DE Benchmark and Testing
Monday March 4, 2013
Room: Central Park West at 3:30 PM
DE 1 3:30 PM
Verification and Validation of LLNL’s Evaluated Nuclear Data Library (ENDL2011)
M.-A. Descalle, D. A. Brown*, B. R. Beck, N. C. Summers, P. Vranas
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA
R. Barnowski, N. Satterlee
Nuclear Engineering Department, University of California, Berkeley, CA
Over the past several years, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) Physics Division has
been developing a python-based automated test suite for nuclear data verification and validation that has
been applied to ENDL2011, the latest edition of LLNL’s evaluated nuclear database. The automated test
suite provide three distinct functionalities: 1) a database can be generated from a repository of input decks
that can then be queried with a set of user-defined parameters such as target isotope or class of benchmark
experiments. 2) The list of selected cases can then be run automatically on LLNL cluster queuing system,
and 3) the run results can be compared to data or results from other cross-section libraries. New benchmark
test problems for three LLNL codes Mercury (Monte Carlo), Amtran and Ardra (Sn) have been added
to the V & V test suite. In particular, thermal critical assemblies and a set of IPPE Activation Ratio
experiments from the ICSBEP database, and a large set of LLNL pulsed spheres experiments have been
added. Work is ongoing to add more experiments as well as MCNP6 models. The latest developments
in the tests suite automation and results of ENDL2011 V & V will be presented. This work performed
under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under
Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. *Now at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY
DE 2 4:00 PM
Testing JEFF-3.1.1 and ENDF/B-VII.1 Decay and Fission Yield Nuclear Data Libraries
with Fission Pulse Neutron Emission and Decay Heat Experiments
O. Cabellos, V. de Fusco, C. J. Diez de la Obra, J. S. Martinez
Department of Nuclear Engineering, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain
E. Gonzalez, D. Cano, F. Alvarez-Velarde
CIEMAT, Spain
The aim of this work is to test the present status of Evaluated Decay Data and Fission Yield data libraries
to predict the decay heat and the neutron emission rate, average neutron energy and neutron delayed spectra
after a neutron fission pulse. These calculations are compared with documented experimental values.
Calculations were performed with JEFF-3.1.1 and ENDF/B-VII.1. In addition, uncertainty propagation
calculations of the current uncertainties in these Nuclear Data Libraries are also performed. Decay heat,
neutron emission and their uncertainties are predicted with an updated version of ACAB code (NEA-1839
ACAB-2008). For decay heat, beta, gamma and total contribution are analyzed. Due to ultimate TAGS
data, the previous calculations are repeated taken into account this new data. For delayed neutron emission,
each isotope able to emit delayed neutrons following beta decay is taken into account. These results
are compared with the ones furnished by libraries themselves through the ”Keepin formulation”, which is
an experimental-based approach with reliable results used since 50’s in nuclear reactor design. Acknowledgements:
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Atomic Energy
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