A stress test on ²³⁵U(n, f) in adjustment with HCI and HMI benchmarks

¹ China Nuclear Data Center, China Institute of Atomic Energy, PO Box 275-41, Beijing 102413, China
² Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho Falls, ID, USA

^a e-mail: haicheng@ciae.ac.cn

Published online: 13 September 2017

Abstract

To understand how compensation errors occur in a nuclear data adjustment mostly devoted to U-Pu fuelled fast critical experiments and with only limited information on U-235 data, a stress test on ²³⁵U(n,f) was suggested, using critical benchmarks sensitive to ²³⁵U(n,f) in 1∼ 10 keV region. The adjustment benchmark exercise with 20 integral data suggested by the NEA WPEC/SG33 was used as the reference, where practically only one experiment did give information on U-235 data. The k_eff of HCI4.1 and HCI6.2 experimental benchmarks were used as the 21st and 22nd integral data separately to perform stress tests. The adjusted integral values and cross sections based on 20, 21 and 22 integral data using the same nuclear data and covariance data sets were compared. The results confirm that compensation errors can be created by missing essential constraints.