Linearization of thermal neutron scattering cross section to optimize the number of energy grid points

Tada, Kenichi   

The number of energy grids of the thermal neutron scattering law data has a large impact on the data size of a cross section file of continuous energy Monte Carlo calculation codes. The optimization of the number of energy grids is an effective way to reduce the data size. This study developed the linearization method of the thermal neutron scattering cross section to optimize the number of energy grids and the linearization function was implemented in the nuclear data processing code FRENDY. The linearization process which is used in the resonance reconstruction and the Doppler broadening was adopted. The criticality benchmarks which use ZrH as the moderator were calculated to estimate the impact of the difference of the energy grids on neutronics calculations. The calculation results indicate that the linearization of the thermal neutron scattering cross section improves the prediction accuracy of neutronics calculations.