Nuclear Science and Engineering / Volume 170 / Number 3 / March 2012 / Pages 265-279
Technical Paper / dx.doi.org/10.13182/NSE11-37
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This paper presents new evaluations for the two natural isotopes of copper from thermal neutron energy up to 200 MeV, including covariances. The evaluation and adjustment method consists of applying a Monte Carlo method to select the model parameters to obtain better agreement with differential data, criticality safety, and fusion benchmarks. In the resonance range, the latest resonance parameters and uncertainties are adopted. In the fast neutron range, the TALYS reaction code is used to calculate all nuclear data quantities and covariances. The proposed evaluations present important improvements for fusion benchmarks compared to the current libraries. These new evaluations of 63Cu and 65Cu are proposed for the JEFF-3.2 European nuclear data library. As a spinoff, correlations between cross sections and benchmarks can be obtained.