No abstract

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has fabricated stable, transportable 10 M and 1 G standard resistors for use in an international comparison of high resistances. This fabrication process is being applied to the construction of standard resistors of values up to 10 T, with initial results indicating significant improvements in stability and fewer adverse effects induced by mechanical shock and vibration.

test of high temperature reactor spherical fuel elements under Journal of Engineering for Gas Turbines and Power 132 (2010).

The International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project, a sanctioned program under the auspices of the Nuclear Energy Agency of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, has been a highly successful and productive collaboration, now encompassing over 5,000 evaluated experimental benchmarks trusted and relied upon throughout the international nuclear communities. The success of this project led to the development of the International Reactor Physics Experiment Evaluation Project, which is dedicated to the evaluation of benchmark experiment data to sustain current and future reactor physics validation needs. These exemplary programs, and their widely utilized handbooks, serve as gold standards to which other databases strive to emulate. The purpose of the two projects is to preserve modern and legacy experimental data and evaluate it in a standardized handbook format to provide quality benchmarks to support modern and future criticality safety and reactor physics validation. These two projects have often served as the mechanism through which historic and modern neutronics experiments are evaluated and shared across international borders, to best provide unique, high-quality peer-reviewed, and often otherwise unavailable, benchmark data. The contents of these handbooks are utilized not only in validating criticality safety, reactor physics, and advanced reactor calculations, but are used to validate neutronics calculations and nuclear data for most other nuclear applications. This manuscript discusses both international programs and available content to enable advanced reactor design validation.

The status of the two neutronics international benchmark projects sanctioned by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Nuclear Energy Agency (OECD NEA), the International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP) and the International Reactor Physics Experiment Evaluation Project (IRPhEP), was last directly discussed with the international nuclear data community at the 14th International Conference on Nuclear Data for Science and Technology (ND2019) in Beijing, China. Since ND2019, the quantity of available integral benchmark experiment data has increased. The primary purpose of the ICSBEP and IRPhEP is to provide extensively peer-reviewed benchmark data to the international nuclear community in support of validation and testing of nuclear data and models. A total of 28 countries have contributed to the past and continued success of these projects as benchmark evaluations, technical reviews, and experimental data using their own time and resources: 26 to the ICSBEP and 25 to the IRPhEP. Key contributions to the handbooks over the past three years can only be highlighted within this paper. Full technical details and benchmark experiment descriptions can be located within the benchmark reports distributed within recent editions of the handbooks.