Effect of correlation between cross sections and angular distributions in nuclear data of 63Cu on estimation of uncertainty of neutron penetration

Abstract

Uncertainty in neutron reaction rates after penetrating a 608mm-thick copper benchmark experiment performed by the FNS facility of JAEA was estimated based on two different kinds of the Total Monte Carlo methods under random sampling methodology. 500 random nuclear data files were generated for ⁶³Cu by the T6 code system with perturbing underlying model parameters. In the first method, these files were used directly to yield processed library preserving all the correlations among different physical quantities. In the second method, the random files populated by T6 were used but the angular distribution data were kept fixed to the non-perturbed nominal ones. It was found that the two methods gave the same neutron reaction rate after the 608 mm penetration of a copper, however uncertainty of the second method was larger than that of the first method. It shows that the correlation between total cross section and angular distribution of elastic scattering at 0 degree, which stems from Wick’s inequality, affects uncertainty of the calculated neutron reaction rate. The result is consistent with the case of ²⁸Si on deep penetration of thick concrete problem previously reported by the authors. It could be concluded that the uncertainty obtained by using the covariance files given in the ENDF-6 format may not give correct results for the uncertainty of neutron penetration calculation.