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Benchmark testing for the newly developed Japanese evaluated nuclear data library JENDL-4.0 is carried out by using a huge amount of the integral data. Benchmark calculations are performed with the continuous-energy Monte Carlo code with a large number of neutron histories or with the deterministic procedure which has been developed for fast reactor analyses in Japan. In the present paper, representative benchmark results are shown as a rapid report. They are the results for criticality of low enriched UO2 or MOX fueled light water moderated systems, of uranium or plutonium fuelled solution systems, of various fast reactors, and results of PIE analyses for a PWR spent fuel and actinoide samples irradiated in fast reactors.

The prompt fission neutron spectra covariance matrices of 235U, 238U and 239Pu were evaluated using the Monte Carlo method for two empirical spectra formulations, Watt and Kornilov, and compared to the existing evaluations such as JENDL-3.3. The fission spectra, together with the covariance matrices and the methods for the calculation of the corresponding sensitivity profiles were validated on several applications, including shielding (VENUS-3 benchmark, pressure vessel dosimetry) as well as on fast and thermal reactor systems (KRITZ and SNEAK critical experiments). A new set of parameters for a Kornilov model is proposed that improve both benchmark performance and the agreement with recently measured differential spectra. A recommendation to use constrained sensitivity coefficients was confirmed for the case of the fission spectrum induced uncertainty in the effective multiplication factor ( k eff ) and in the detector responses, in order to assure the proper normalisation of the corresponding covariance matrices.

This paper investigates the impact of the incident energy dependence of prompt fission neutron spectra (PFNS) on uncertainty propagation calculations. Uncertainty propagation from incident energy-dependent PFNS to criticality is formulated and its impact is evaluated numerically. It is found that the conventional procedure, in which representative PFNS covariance data for a specific incident energy are used, results in a larger PFNS-induced uncertainty than the straightforward procedure, in which different PFNS covariance data are used for each incident energy range given in the nuclear data libraries. The present study suggests that the correlation between different incident energies of PFNS has a large impact on uncertainty propagation calculation results for nuclear characteristics.

A new method to estimate a change in the effective multiplication factor due to the perturbed fission source distribution has been proposed for Monte Carlo perturbation calculations with the correlated sampling and differential operator sampling techniques. The method has been implemented into the MVP code for verification. Simple benchmark problems have been set up for fast and thermal systems and the applicability of the method has been verified with the problems. Consequently, it has been confirmed that the method is very effective to estimate the change. It has been also shown that there are some cases where the perturbed source effect is significant and the change in reactivity cannot be estimated accurately without taking the effect into account. Even in such cases, the new method can estimate the perturbed source effect and the estimation of the change in reactivity has been remarkably improved.

This paper describes the recent development status of a Monte Carlo code MVP developed at Japan Atomic Energy Agency. The basic features and capabilities of MVP are overviewed. In addition, new capabilities useful for reactor analysis are also described.

JAEA has provided an evaluated nuclear data library JENDL and nuclear application codes such as MARBLE, SRAC, MVP and PHITS. These domestic codes have been widely used in many universities and industrial companies in Japan. However, we sometimes find problems in imported processing systems and need to revise them when the new JENDL is released. To overcome such problems and immediately process the nuclear data when it is released, JAEA started developing a new nuclear data processing system, FRENDY in 2013. This paper describes the outline of the development of FRENDY and both its capabilities and performances by the analyses of criticality experiments. The verification results indicate that FRENDY properly generates ACE files.