Accuracy of thorium cross section of JENDL-4.0 library in thorium based fuel core evaluation

Abstract

Considering the importance of thorium data and concerning about the accuracy of Th232 cross section library, a series of experiments on thorium critical core with different neutron spectra has been implemented at Kyoto University Critical Assembly (KUCA). Reactivity worth of control rod and thorium sample was measured after the cores experimentally achieved critical state. In order to verify the accuracy of thorium cross section library, calculations of effective multiplication factor, control rod worth, reactivity worth of Th plates for the same core configurations were done by MVP code (Nagaya et al., 2005) using JENDL-4.0 library (Shibata et al., 2011). From the comparison between the measured and calculated results, the calculations are found to overestimate effective multiplication factor about (0.90±0.01–0.99±0.01)%. By comparing the measured Th sample worth with the calculated one, Th capture underestimation is reassured. Sensitive study on reactivity worth evaluation was conducted and it suggests that Th capture cross section is needed to be adjusted at thermal energy range to provide more reliable evaluation for thorium based fuel core design and safety calculation.