Journal of the Korean Physical Society, Vol. 59, No. 2, August 2011, pp. 1252~1255
A new Monte Carlo (MC) formulation aimed at quantifying effects of both statistical and nuclear cross section uncertainties on neutronics design parameters on nuclear systems is presented. The effectiveness of the formulation is examined through computing the contribution of the cross section uncertainties to the variance of the MC estimate on keff of two fast spectrum criticality benchmark problems; GODIVA and JEZEBEL using McCARD as a MC neutronics code and JENDL 3.3 for needed cross section and covariance data. It is shown that the MC formulation is capable of identifying the nuclide and the type of the cross sections that contribute significantly to, and to elicit the necessary improvement in the existing covariance data to reduce, the uncertainties of the criticality calculations.
