A Preliminary Study on a Method for Generating Self-shielded Multi-group Cross Sections in an Unresolved Resonance Region

The unresolved resonance region (URR) begins at an energy where it is difficult to measure individual resonances and extends to an energy where the effects of fluctuations in the resonance cross sections become unimportant for practical calculations. In ENDF-format evaluations, this 'unresolved range' is handled by giving average values for the resonance spacing and the various partial widths, together with their probability distributions. These unresolved resonance parameters are used two ways in view of transport solver. For a deterministic method, the self-shielded multi-group cross sections are generated by UNRESR and GROUPR modules of NJOY code which use Bondarenko method. For a Monte Carlo method, so-called Bondarenko method is not very useful for continuous-energy Monte Carlo codes like MCNP. The natural approach for treating unresolved-resonance self-shielding for Monte Carlo codes is the 'Probability Table' method. The PURR module produces probability tables that can be used in versions of MCNP from 4B on to treat unresolved-resonance self-shielding. We present a method to generate self-shielded multi-group cross sections in URR for easy numerical integration and tested on the total cross section of ²³⁹Pu. This is the first phase of study and the effects of statistical resonances in URR are identified by comparing generated multi-group cross sections. Test will be performed on several other nuclides and this method might be used as a one of items for developing multi-group cross section generation code for fast reactor analysis