2023 article

Ab Initio Evaluation of Uranium Carbide S(alpha, beta) and Thermal Neutron Cross Sections

15TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NUCLEAR DATA FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, ND2022, Vol. 284.

By: J. Crozier n & A. Hawari n

topics (OpenAlex): Nuclear Physics and Applications; Nuclear Materials and Properties; Nuclear reactor physics and engineering
Source: Web Of Science
Added: September 11, 2023

Uranium Carbide (UC) is a nuclear fuel material which offers better neutron economy and lower fuel-cycle costs compared to conventional mixed-oxide fuels. UC’s lattice binding and dynamical properties impact thermal neutron scattering and low temperature epithermal resonance absorption. The Thermal Scattering Law (TSL) describes the scattering system available energy and momentum transfer states. There is no TSL evaluation for UC in the ENDF/B-VIII.0 database; herein, ab-initio lattice dynamics (AILD) techniques are invoked to calculate the phonon spectrum for UC using spin-orbit-coupling density functional theory (DFT). The TSLs, inelastic and elastic thermal scattering cross sections for Uranium238 and Carbon12 in UC, respectively, are calculated in FLASSH for use in higher fidelity reactor design calculations.