Impact of Thorium Capture Cross Section Uncertainty on the Thorium Utilized ADS Reactivity Calculation

Abstract

Recently, the researches on fast neutron spectrum system utilized thorium fuel are widely conducted. However, the recent thorium cross section libraries are limited compared to uranium cross section libraries. The impact of thorium cross section uncertainty on thorium fuel utilized accelerator driven system (ADS) reactivity calculation is estimated in this study. The uncertainty of the keff caused by 232Th capture cross section of JENDL-4.0 is about 1.3%. The uncertainty of JENDL-4.0 is needed to be enhanced to provide more reliable results on reactivity calculation for the fast system. The impact of uncertainty of 232Th capture cross section of ENDF/B-VII is small (0.1%). Therefore, it will cause no significant impact of the thorium cross section library on the thorium utilized ADS design calculation.