Measurement of leakage neutron spectra from graphite cylinders irradiated with D-T neutrons for validation of evaluated nuclear data

A benchmark experiment for validation of graphite data evaluated from nuclear data libraries was conducted for 14 MeV neutrons irradiated on graphite cylinder samples. The experiments were performed using the benchmark experimental facility at the China Institute of Atomic Energy (CIAE). The leakage neutron spectra from the surface of graphite (Phi 13 cm x 20 cm) at 60 degrees and 120 degrees and graphite (Phi 13 cm x 2 cm) at 60 degrees were measured by the time-of-flight (TOF) method. The obtained results were compared with the measurements made by the Monte Carlo neutron transport code MCNP-4C with the ENDF/B-VII.1, CENDL-3.1 and JENDL-4.0 libraries. The results obtained from a 20 cm-thick sample revealed that the calculation results with CENDL-3.1 and JENDL-4.0 libraries showed good agreements with the experiments conducted in the whole energy region. However, a large discrepancy of approximately 40% was observed below the 3 MeV energy region with the ENDF/B-VII.1 library. For the 2 cm-thick sample, the calculated results obtained from the abovementioned three libraries could not reproduce the experimental data in the energy range of 5-7 MeV. The graphite data in CENDL-3.1 were verified for the first time and were proved to be reliable. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.