Validation of KENO V.a Using ENDF/B-VI and ENDF/B-VII for Criticality Safety Applications

Abstract

An upper subcritical limit (USL), which includes allowance for bias and bias uncertainty in the calculated k_eff, needs to be established for all criticality safety code calculations. In this paper, the bias and bias uncertainty associated with k_eff values computed using KENO V.a are evaluated based on benchmark experiments for ²³⁵U, ²³³U, ²³⁹Pu and MOX systems. The code validation is performed using the 238-group ENDF/B-VI and ENDF/B-VII cross-section libraries provided in the SCALE code package [1]. The evaluation suggests that the ENDF/B-VII library performs better than the ENDF/B-VI, with biases less than 2 mk for most systems.