MCNP6 Fission Cross Section Calculations at Intermediate and High Energies

TL;DR

This paper validates MCNP6's ability to accurately calculate fission cross sections at intermediate and high energies, after fixing identified bugs in its event generators, showing good agreement with experimental data across a wide energy range.

Contribution

The paper identifies and corrects specific bugs in MCNP6's event generators, improving its accuracy in fission cross section calculations at various energies.

Findings

MCNP6's corrected calculations align well with experimental data

Bugs in CEM03.03 and LAQGSM03.03 were identified and fixed

Accurate fission cross sections obtained from tens of MeV to 1 TeV

Abstract

MCNP6 has been Validated and Verified (V&V) against intermediate- and high-energy fission cross-section experimental data. An error in the calculation of fission cross sections of 181Ta and a few nearby target nuclei by the CEM03.03 event generator in MCNP6 and a "bug: in the calculation of fission cross sections with the GENXS option of MCNP6 while using the LAQGSM03.03 event generator were detected during our V&V work. After fixing both problems, we find that MCNP6 using CEM03.03 and LAQGSM03.03 calculates fission cross sections in good agreement with available experimental data for reactions induced by nucleons, pions, and photons on both subactinide and actinide nuclei at incident energies from several tens of MeV to about 1 TeV.