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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Expert‐in‐the‐loop design of integral nuclear data experiments

Abstract Nuclear data are fundamental inputs to radiation transport codes used for reactor design and criticality safety. The design of experiments to reduce nuclear data uncertainty has been a challenge for many years, but advances in the sensitivity calculations of radiation transport codes within the last two decades have made optimal experimental design possible. The design of integral nuclear experiments poses numerous challenges not emphasized in classical optimal design, in particular, constrained design spaces (in both a statistical and engineering sense), severely under‐determined systems, and optimality uncertainty. We present a design pipeline to optimize critical experiments that uses constrained Bayesian optimization within an iterative expert‐in‐the‐loop framework. We show a successfully completed experiment campaign designed with this framework that involved two critical configurations and multiple measurements that targeted compensating errors in 239 Pu nuclear data.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Hierarchical Data Format for Nuclear Data Sensitivities [Slides]

An HDF5-based file format was introduced for the sensitivity data calculated by TSUNAMI. The format was defined to collect the sensitivity coefficients into hyperslabs, which optimizes file reading time and therefore improves the time-to-solution for applications. In future work, this format will be extended to store sensitivity data for depletion calculations.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

How can a diverse set of integral and semi-integral measurements inform identification of discrepant nuclear data? [Slides]

Importance of nuclear data to bias changed significantly when including diverse measurement sets. LLNL pulsed sphere measurements provided information for 9 Be nuclear data above 2 MeV and subcritical benchmarks provided information for 240 Pu nuclear data between 100 keV and 10 MeV. Pulsed sphere leakage spectra and neutron noise observables are differently sensitive to nuclear data compared to critical benchmarks. Leakage spectra are sensitive to nuclear data above 5 MeV. Count rate and Feynman Y are more sensitive to nuclear data. A change in bias can help evaluators identify discrepant nuclear data. In the future, EUCLID plans to perform RAFIEKI analysis with additional benchmark and measurement sets.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Criticality Experiments to Reduce Compensating Errors in Plutonium Nuclear Data

Compensating errors between nuclear data observables in a library can adversely impact application simulations. The primary goal of the EUCLID project (Experiments Underpinned by Computational Learning for Improvements in Nuclear Data) is to reduce compensating errors in nuclear data. A new criticality experiment, described in this work, was designed with the specific target nuclear data of 239 Pu fission, inelastic scattering, elastic scattering, capture, nu-bar, and prompt fission neutron spectrum (PFNS). This work will focus on the design and execution of the EUCLID experiment, performed on the Planet vertical lift critical assembly machine at the National Criticality Experiments Research Center (NCERC). The criticality experiment includes two different configurations with very different geometries: one is cube-like to minimize neutron leakage while the other is slab-like to maximize leakage. Having these two widely varying configurations allows the scattering sensitivities of 239 Pu to the neutron multiplication factor to be greatly changed while minimally impacting the other cross section sensitivities. Both configurations utilize the Pu ZPPR (Zero Power Physics Reactor) plates as fuel. The experiments were designed using a D-Optimality criteria, which is an optimization method minimizing the log-determinant of the adjusted nuclear data covariance for the target reactions. These experiments include not only inference of k eff , as done in all critical benchmark experiments, but several other responses as well, such as neutron multiplication measurements and reaction rate ratios. After analysis of the measured data is complete, adjustment of nuclear data will be performed to assess whether the new experimental data successfully reduced compensating errors.

21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Proceedings for the Workshop on Applied Nuclear Data Activities 2025

The 2025 Workshop for Applied Nuclear Data Activities (WANDA) covered four topic areas in nuclear data: Nuclear Data and Deterrence, Nuclear Data Prioritization for Fusion, High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium and Novel Moderators for Advanced Reactors, and Data Preservation and Data Workflows. The intention of this workshop is to connect different communities that are invested in nuclear data and have their own unique sets of needs for the purposes of sharing information, fostering collaboration in areas of shared interest, and leveraging synergistic capabilities. The attendance of federal program managers at these workshops is essential in creating awareness of the needs of their respective communities and in providing information to better guide funding investments. In each of these topical sessions, a general description of the nuclear data needs and/or capabilities was presented, along with discussions of existing capabilities that could be leveraged, potential synergistic needs or resources, and challenges that must be overcome for the application space to progress. There are many synergistic nuclear data needs among these application spaces. The discussion largely focused on increasing the accuracy of the nuclear data and better quantifying the data uncertainties that have the greatest impact on applications. The full-day session on data processing and data workflows was by nature intended to be synergistic and applicable to all technical sessions at WANDA. A notable common theme that was highlighted across all sessions was the need for accelerated delivery of nuclear data products across complex and time-consuming workflows.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Zirconium Nuclear Data Campaign: Measurement of 90 Zr ( n, γ ) Cross Section

The isotopes of Zr with A = [90, 91, 92, 94] make up more than 97% of naturally occurring Zr and are important to many nuclear applications such as nuclear reactors. One of the attractive qualities of naturally occurring Zr isotopes is that they have a low σ γ /σ t ratio at most neutron energies. Thus, they improve the neutron economy in reactors by preferentially scattering neutrons rather than absorbing them. This same quality also presents a challenge to measuring the capture cross section, σ γ , of Zr isotopes. The ENDF/B VIII.0 library has a relative uncertainty of approximately 10–20% for incident neutron energies < 0.1 MeV and an uncertainty greater than 20% for energies > 0.1 MeV for the majority of natural Zr isotopes. This motivated the Nuclear Criticality Safety Program to embark on a campaign to accurately measure and evaluate these Zr isotopes. In this work, we demonstrate energy-dependent neutron capture cross section measurements for the first enriched sample to be measured: 90 Zr.

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Reactivity Coefficient Measurements to Aid in Reducing Compensating Errors in Plutonium Nuclear Data

Compensating errors between several nuclear data observables in a nuclear data library can adversely impact application simulations. The primary goal of the EUCLID project (Experiments Underpinned by Computational Learning for Improvements in Nuclear Data) is to reduce compensating errors between fast (0.1–5 MeV) 239Pu nuclear data for prompt fission neutron spectra (PFNS), average prompt fission neutron multiplicities, and neutron induced fission, capture, elastic, and inelastic cross sections. This work will focus on the design and execution of void reactivity coefficient measurements in the EUCLID experiment, performed on the Planet vertical lift critical assembly machine at the National Criticality Experiments Research Center (NCERC). Two different base configurations were designed and measured, one with high neutron leakage, and one with low neutron leakage. Both were primarily made up of plutonium metal (Zero Power Physics Reactor plates) without interstitial moderators and reflected by half-inch aluminum. Design optimization showed that void reactivity coefficient measurements in three locations per configuration was most impactful to reduce nuclear data uncertainties due to the varying impacts from elastic and inelastic scattering, as well as fission and capture. The locations for measurements were chosen based on preliminary studies which balanced measurement uncertainty and measurement practicality. The measurements were also selected to have sensitivities maximally complementary to previous arrangements. Comparisons across nuclear data libraries highlight the potential impact.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Verification of Revised and Upcoming Nuclear Data Sensitivity MCNP Features [Poster]

Nuclear data is ubiquitous across nuclear applications. Improved nuclear data means more accurate simulations. Past focus on k eff caused compensating error and areas of unvalidated nuclear data. Sensitivity can be used to optimize experiments to focus on specific areas. Sensitivity capabilities must be expanded and improved to design multivariate experiments focused on nuclear data needs.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Proceedings for the Workshop on Applied Nuclear Data Activities 2024

The Workshop for Applied Nuclear Data Activities (WANDA) is designed to increase communication among nuclear data (ND) users in multidisciplinary federal programs, ND producers, ND funders, and other ND experts. It also presents an opportunity to cross-pollinate ideas as well as introduce ND gaps identified by federal programs to ND experts and ND capabilities to the various federal ND users. WANDA 2024 included five technical sessions, three of which focused on Fusion Energy Sciences (FES)—FES Fusion Neutronics, FES Tritium Production, and FES Material Damage—and two stand-alone sessions—Isotopes and Targetry for Nuclear Data and Uncertainty Quantification. The FES sessions successfully brought new voices to the WANDA discussions, expanding the application space in which nuclear data are critical. FES programs need accurate nuclear data with realistic uncertainty quantification to properly estimate, for example, shielding, activation, tritium production, helium production, structural material integrity, and superconducting magnet operation. This includes a variety of projectile (neutrons, photons, charged particles) and target atoms. One of the action items common to all the FES sessions was a need to perform sensitivity studies to identify the prioritization of nuclear data needs. The Isotopes and Targetry session highlighted the many capabilities available to produce high-quality targets for nuclear data measurements, including 3D printing with spherical powders, combustion synthesis coupled with spin coating & electrospraying, inkjet printing, and isotopic doping. These new methods open doors for more accurate measurement, but it was also stressed that sample characterization following any method of fabrication is of the highest importance to accurately interpret nuclear data measurement results that used that sample. The Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) session was broken into two categories: nuclear data uncertainty quantification and the use of that uncertainty quantification. Thematic to the UQ session was the loss of information when going from nuclear data measurement, to evaluation, to evaluated file, and finally to neutron transport calculations. Current evaluated ND libraries typically only contain covariances, which assume that the probability distributions are Gaussian. Beyond being a simplified assumption for many evaluations, this can lead to negative values on many observables when attempting to sample the covariance. The covariance format, however, is very efficient in that a simple set of linear equations can transform uncertainty from parameters or cross sections to the application of interest. Focused collaboration is needed between nuclear data evaluators and nuclear data users to ensure that needs are being met.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Overview of the OECD-NEA Working Party on International Nuclear Data Evaluation Cooperation (WPEC)

The OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) Working Party on International Nuclear Data Evaluation Cooperation (WPEC) was established in 1989 to facilitate collaboration in nuclear data activities. Over its thirty year history, different Subgroups have been created to address topics in nearly every aspect of nuclear data, including: experimental measurements, evaluation, validation, model development, quality assurance of databases and the development of software tools. WPEC has recently completed activities on fission yield evaluation, the general nuclear database structure (GNDS) to replace the ENDF-6 format, methods to provide feedback to evaluation, studies of specific capture cross sections, new methods in thermal scattering kernel evaluation and the Collaborative International Evaluated Library Organisation (CIELO) Pilot Project. Ongoing activities in GNDS application programming interface (API) development, methods for covariance evaluation and quality assurance in nuclear data validation using the International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP) database are complemented by the work of two Expert Groups that oversee the High-Priority Request List (HPRL) for Nuclear Data and the continuous development of the GNDS. New activities on the use of integral experiments for nuclear data validation and adjustment, as well as the use of the Shielding Integral Benchmark Archive and Database (SINBAD) for validation have begun and will be coordinated alongside future Subgroups. After three decades we will review the status of WPEC, how it integrates other collections and activities organised by the NEA and how it dovetails with the initiatives of the IAEA and other bodies to effectively coordinate international activities in nuclear data.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2020

The Nuclear Data Interface (NDI) [Slides]

The Nuclear Data Interface (NDI) can be described as: Standardized methodology for accessing and manipulating nuclear data; An API that accesses nuclear data while hiding underlying details from the user; Created to enable codes to access nuclear data without knowledge of a specific library format, content, or location; Both a code and ASCII data format (just to be confusing); Not continuous energy (that’s what NDATK is for).

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2020

ORNL neutron cross section measurements and evaluations for improved nuclear data [Slides]

This presentation discusses the nuclear data measurements and evaluation work for NCSP, including its objective which is to provide measured and evaluated thermal, resonance, unresolved resonance, and fast region cross-section data to address the priority NCSP nuclear data needs. It also discusses its vision which addresses multiple Nuclear Data 5- and 10-year goals and attributes identified in the NCSP Vision. The intended final product is that rigorous ENDF/B evaluations will be produced from cross section measurements and analyses. Measurement work effort focused on NCSP priorities by NCSP Nuclear Data Advisory Group (NDAG) can be found in Appendix B of the 5-year plan. NCSP measurements program at JRC is now part of the DOE/Euratom agreement, Action Sheet 66.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

The LLNL nuclear data infrastructure for the GNDS data format

The next generation of nuclear data infrastructure tools at the Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) consists of pipeline of codes that read and process nuclear data from evaluated files saved in the new GNDS (Generalised Nuclear Data Structure) nuclear data format. The processing code FUDGE (For Updating Data and Generating Evaluations) is at the front-end of this pipeline as it reads and process the evaluated data for use in downstream transport codes. FUDGE is Python based with C and C++ extensions for computationally intensive tasks. As is the case for the evaluated data, the processed output is also saved in the GNDS format and the GIDI+ API is provided as the interface between the processed data and the transport codes. GIDI+ is a C++ based suite of codes and it includes GIDI (General Interaction Data Interface), a library for reading and writing GNDS data, and MCGIDI which is the cross section lookup, and reaction and product distribution sampling interface between Monte Carlo transport codes and the GNDS data. GIDI provides methods for easy access to the multi-group processed GNDS data and this is demonstrated through its implementation in ARDRA, the LLNL deterministic transport code. The evaluation and sampling methods in MCGIDI are available as both CPU and GPU methods which facilitates the use of MCGIDI in both traditional CPU-based as well as the next generation mixed model computational architectures. This is demonstrated through the GIDI+ implementation in MERCURY, the LLNL Monte Carlo transport code. (authors)

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Development of nuclear data processing code FRENDY version 2

Nuclear data processing is an important interface between an evaluated nuclear data library and neutronics calculation codes. JAEA has been developed the new nuclear data processing code FRENDY from 2013. FRENDY version 1 generates the ACE files used for the continuous-energy Monte Carlo codes including PHITS, Solomon, Serpent,and MCNP and it was released as the open-source software under the 2-clause BSD license in 2019.After we released FRENDY version 1, many functions, e.g., the multi-group neutron cross-section library generation, the statistical uncertainty quantification of the probability tables for unresolved resonance cross-section, the 'perturbation' of the ACE file for uncertainty quantification, and the modification of the ENDF-6 formatted nuclear data file, have been developed. We released FRENDY version 2 including these functions. The present paper gives an overview of FRENDY and presents features of new functions implemented in FRENDY version 2. (authors)

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Modeling Systematic Discrepancies in Nuclear-Data Measurements with Machine Learning

Nuclear data and their associated co-variances are constantly being reevaluated as techniques improve and as new experimental data, as well as nuclearmodel developments, emerge. A standard technique used to evaluate mean values in nuclear data, and their associated covariances, is the generalized linear least squares (GLLS) method. Aligning with recent efforts to incorporate measurement features into nuclear data evaluation, we augment GLLS by including a linear term which attempts to predict potential systematic discrepancies in experimental data as related to the measurement features. Due to the general nature of this augmentation, we are able to apply this evaluation to three key observables: neutroninduced fission cross sections, the average prompt neutron multiplicity, and the prompt-fission neutron spectrum of ²³⁹Pu.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2022

LANL Nuclear Data Manager Format Specification v1.0

The LANL nuclear data manager tool is a Python utility that downloads nuclear data from the Nuclear Data Team’s website at https://nucleardata.lanl.gov, arranges it, and configures directory listings for nuclear codes such as the MCNP code to consume. In this document, the Version 1.0 API that this tool relies on will be discussed, which will show how an external provider of nuclear data could set up their website to provide a compatible implementation.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2026

Corrections to official ENDF/B Evaluation Releases for SCALE Nuclear Data

The official ENDF/B nuclear data evaluation releases in the past two decades have incrementally incorporated more detailed information, new nuclide evaluations, and very often have improved the accuracy of radiation transport codes when modeling shielding, fission reactors, criticality benchmarks, and fusion systems. However, like any large collaborative data compilation, these releases have all included small errors. This report documents the small corrections to ENDF/B releases ENDF/B-VII.1, ENDF/B-VIII.0, and ENDF/B-VIII.1 that have been applied during nuclear data processing to produce data libraries for the SCALE code system.

Brown, Jesse M. [Oak Ridge National Laboratory (OR↗
DOE OSTI2022

Verification of Upcoming MCNP Features For Estimating Nuclear Data Sensitivities in Fixed Source Simulations [Abstract]

Predictive simulation codes, like the Monte Carlo N-Particle (MCNP) transport code, are used throughout the nuclear community. These simulations are based on nuclear data. Maximizing the accuracy and precision of nuclear data maximizes the accuracy and precision of the overall simulation. This is imperative to applications that rely on simulations. For example, improving nuclear data for special nuclear material improves simulation accuracy in stockpile stewardship applications, which results in larger safety margins and decreased operational costs. The improvement and validation of nuclear data is completed through integral benchmark experiments. Past benchmarks have primarily been limited to focus on the effective multiplication factor ($\kappa$ eff ); broadening the purview of benchmarks beyond $\kappa$ eff -dependent nuclear data addresses nuclear data deficiencies. Different response types depend on different areas of nuclear data. This dependence is quantified as nuclear data sensitivity: the change in response due to perturbation of a contributing parameter. The larger the nuclear data sensitivity of a response, the more the experiment is influenced by the uncertainties of the nuclear data. The optimization of nuclear data sensitivities in future benchmarks would result in more detailed validation of lesser studied areas of nuclear data. Currently, direct sensitivity capabilities are not easily found for all experiment types and parameters. An MCNP tool to directly estimate the cross section sensitivities of tallied values is under development. Additionally, updates have been made to the perturbation feature of MCNP, which can be used in a less direct approach to estimating sensitivities. This work verifies these features to estimate nuclear data sensitivities in fixed source simulations of a 4.5-kg sphere of alpha- phase weapons-grade plutonium surrounded by differing amounts of copper and polyethylene. Integrated estimates made using MCNP’s tools were found to statistically agree with integrated estimates made from manual perturbation of nuclear data proving the validity of the MCNP tools.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗