MCNP: Criticality safety benchmark problems

This report investigates the suitability of the general purpose Monte Carlo transport code MCNP for criticality safety calculations. The increased use of radiation transport codes for criticality problems has produced a greater user and institutional demand for assurances that such codes give correct results. Responding to these requirements for code validation, MCNP has been benchmarked against the KENO standard test set. MCNP results are compared to KENO calculations, as well as experimental results, where available. A comparison of MCNP continuous energy and multigroup results indicates that the continuous energy cross sections are more accurate, and MCNP successfully predicts the experimental results, in some cases better than KENO, within the expected data and statistical uncertainties. This benchmark study demonstrates that MCNP can accurately and efficiently model a relatively broad spectrum of criticality problems. 24 figs, 3 tabs.