Validation of JENDL-3.3 by criticality benchmark testing

In the thermal uranium core, the keff-values of STACY, TRACY and JRR-4 overestimated with JENDL-3.2 were improved significantly by decreasing of about 0.6% with JENDL-3.3. This was due to a modification of the fission spectrum and thermal fission cross section of ²³⁵U from JENDL-3.2 to JENDL-3.3 data, and furthermore STACY and TRACY cores with uranyl nitrate solution were decreased by about 0.2% by reducing slightly selecting the thermal cross sections of N-14. For the uranium small fast cores, the discrepancies of keff values between the calculations and the experiments were very small for JENDL-3.3. In the thermal Pu cores of TCA, the keff-values calculated with JENDL-3.3 were in good agreement with the experimental values. For Pu fuel cores of ZPPR-9 and FCA-XVII, the keff values calculated with JENDL-3.3 became larger and better than those for JENDL-3.2. And furthermore it was shown that important reactivity worth of sodium void, Doppler and control rod were in good agreement with the experiments. However, keff-values for the cores with SS reflector such as JOYO overestimated and as a result total cross section of Cr was corrected. In small fast cores with U-233 fuel, the keff-values overestimated with JENDL-3.2 were improved considerably with JENDL-3.3, due to reevaluation of U-233 fission cross sections in the high energy region. In the present status, it is shown that the applicability of JENDL-3.3 to nuclear characteristics for various reactors is more excellent than the other libraries such as ENDF/B-VI.5 and JEF-2.2. (author)