https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202328417005
Ab Initio Evaluation of Uranium Carbide S(α,β) and Thermal Neutron Cross Sections
Department of Nuclear Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh NC 27695, USA
* Corresponding author: jpcrozie@ncsu.edu
Published online: 26 May 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.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2023
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
