Experimental validation of the temperature behavior of the ENDF/B-VIII.0 thermal scattering kernel for light water

Abstract

The Neutron Physics Department at Centro Atómico Bariloche developed new models for the interaction of thermal neutrons with water which have been validated against experimental data, including new thermal scattering experiments, and were adopted for the release of ENDF/B-VIII.0. Although the older models are, in general, good for most applications, some discrepancies had appeared in the case of heavy water, and this motivated new measurements that validated the new model. In the case of light water, the new model predicts a reduction of the total cross section around 0.025 eV when the temperature is increased from room temperature. This reduction, that is not predicted by the existing models, and potentially affects the calculation of temperature reactivity coefficients in nuclear reactors, has been traced to a shift in the vibrational frequency spectrum of liquid water. The only experimental data previously available is from an experiment performed at the Demokritos reactor in the ’60s at 293 K and 473 K, which validates the new model when the cross section ratios are computed. In order to verify this effect at a lower temperature range, a transmission experiment was carried out at the VESUVIO spectrometer in the ISIS facility in the UK in June 2018, measuring the total neutron cross section in the range from 283 K to 353 K. Here, we present this new experimental data and its comparison with the models.