The MANE process of generating continuous energy hot-operating temperature cross sections

Abstract

MANE (MCNP ACE from NJOY & ENDF), a code for generating continuous energy cross sections at arbitrary temperatures, was created. Cross sections were evaluated using NJOY99 such that they would agree with the cross sections provided by MCNP5. The MANE cross sections were found to be in very good agreement with those provided by MCNP5 with some minor exceptions caused by round-off errors and some differences in the unresolved resonance region. Differences in the resonance region are caused by differences in the random number generator used to start the cross section calculations. The MANE cross sections were verified against the MCNP5 cross sections in five unique MCNP configurations: an 8.7% enriched MOX fuel pin cell, a UO₂ assembly (controlled and uncontrolled), a MOX assembly, and a whole core configuration containing the 3 assemblies. In each of these cases, eigenvalue and tally density results were found to be in very good agreement with one another.