Comparison of Measured and Calculated Nitrogen-16 Activity in Water for Application to Nuclear-Powered Ship Reactor Designs

To determine the accuracy of the neutron transport computer code used to predict ¹⁶N production rates, data on ¹⁶O(n, p)¹⁶N reaction rates were obtained by performing an ¹⁶O activation experiment. Measured absolute ¹⁶N production rates are compared to the calculated data. The comparison indicates that calculations using ENDF/B-II data consistently overestimate ¹⁶N production rates by a factor that ranges from 1.06 to 2.00. Good agreement between measurements and ENDF/B-IV calculations reveals that the latest version of the nuclear data used in the code is remarkably improved over previous versions.