• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.46-61
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• 2001

The neutron cross sections of $^{160}$ Dy, $^{161}$ Dy, $^{162}$ Dy, $^{l63}$Dy, and $^{164}$ Dy have been evaluated in the resonance region of which upper energy is set to several tens of keV. The cross sections are formulated with resonance parameters in the energy region under consideration. In the resolved resonance region, the positive-energy resonance parameters were adopted from the BNL compilation published in 1984 with slight, if any, modifications. A bound level resonance for each isotope except $^{162}$ Dy was invoked to reproduce the reference 2200 m/s cross sections and the bound coherent scattering length. Subsequently, the statistical behavior of the resolved resonance parameters was analyzed, and thus obtained s-wave average parameters were adopted in the unresolved resonance region. In addition, recent measurements of the capture cross sections in the unresolved region were taken into account in adjusting the average resonance parameters for high orbital angular momentum resonances. The present evaluation resulted in large improvements in the cross sections over the ENDF/B-Vl release 6.6.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1999.05a
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• pp.32-32
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• 1999

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.1240-1249
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• 2017

An essential component of the neutron transport solver is the resonance self-shielding calculation used to determine equivalence cross sections. The neutron transport code, MPACT, is currently using the subgroup self-shielding method, in which the method of characteristics (MOC) is used to solve purely absorbing fixed-source problems. Recent efforts incorporating multigroup kernels to the MOC solvers in MPACT have reduced runtime by roughly $2{\times}$. Applying the same concepts for self-shielding and developing a novel lumped parameter approach to MOC, substantial improvements have also been made to the self-shielding computational efficiency without sacrificing any accuracy. These new multigroup and lumped parameter capabilities have been demonstrated on two test cases: (1) a single lattice with quarter symmetry known as VERA (Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications) Progression Problem 2a and (2) a two-dimensional quarter-core slice known as Problem 5a-2D. From these cases, self-shielding computational time was reduced by roughly $3-4{\times}$, with a corresponding 15-20% increase in overall memory burden. An azimuthal angle sensitivity study also shows that only half as many angles are needed, yielding an additional speedup of $2{\times}$. In total, the improvements yield roughly a $7-8{\times}$ speedup. Given these performance benefits, these approaches have been adopted as the default in MPACT.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.281-290
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• 2014

In order to properly quantify fission reactor neutronics parameter uncertainties, we have to use covariance data and sensitivity profiles consistently. In the present paper, we establish two consistent methodologies for uncertainty quantification: a self-shielded cross section-based consistent methodology and an infinitely-diluted cross section-based consistent methodology. With these methodologies and the covariance data of uranium-238 nuclear data given in JENDL-3.3, we quantify uncertainties of infinite neutron multiplication factors of light water reactor and fast reactor fuel cells. While an inconsistent methodology gives results which depend on the energy group structure of neutron flux and neutron-nuclide reaction cross section representation, both the consistent methodologies give fair results with no such dependences.