Development and Testing of Nuclear Data Libraries for Improved Energy Deposition Modeling - Paper 144

Accurate calculations of local energy deposition rates require the presence of gamma production data (GPD) in the nuclear data library used by radiation transport codes such as MCNP5, MONACO, or Denovo. The lack of GPD in the underlying nuclear data library can cause significant over-prediction of local heat generation rates with a corresponding under-prediction of heat generation rates away from a region of interest. To address this concern, continuous energy (CE) and multigroup (MG) cross section libraries with additional GPD have been created. Both ACE- and AMPX-formatted CE libraries, as well as ANISN- and AMPX-formatted MG libraries, have been created and are undergoing verification and validation (V and V) testing. A hybrid data set consisting of cross-section evaluations from five different nuclear data repositories has been developed. This hybrid data set, referred to as GPD-Rev0, is intended to support enhanced energy deposition calculations. Code-specific libraries in CE ACE, CE AMPX, MG AMPX, and MG ANISN formats have been created from the GPD-Rev0 data set. V and V testing has demonstrated that these various code-specific libraries are performing well for the intended applications. Localized over- and under-predictions of HFIR heating rates have been addressed without adversely affecting the prediction of other key operating parameters. (authors)