NEA-1486 ICSBEP2025-HANDBOOK.

ICSBEP2025-HANDBOOK.

The ICSBEP Handbook is available on Online. To obtain the access to the online version, you must submit your request using the following link: https://www.oecd-nea.org/jcms/pl_20291/international-criticality-safety-benchmark-evaluation-project-icsbep-handbook

The International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP) Handbook contains criticality safety benchmark specifications that have been derived from experiments that were performed at various critical facilities around the world. The benchmark specifications are intended for use by criticality safety engineers to validate calculation techniques used to establish minimum subcritical margins for operations with fissile material and to determine criticality alarm requirement and placement. Many of the specifications are also useful for nuclear data testing. The handbook is produced by the ICSBEP technical review group, under the aegis of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA). While co-ordination and administration of the ICSBEP is undertaken by the NEA, each participating country is responsible for the administration, technical direction, and priorities of the project within their respective countries. Access to some of the information and data included in this handbook may be restricted.

The evaluated criticality safety benchmark data in the 2025 edition are presented in nine volumes. These volumes span over 84 000 pages and contain 627 evaluations with benchmark specifications for 5 184 critical, near-critical or subcritical configurations, 53 criticality alarm placement/shielding configurations with multiple dose points for each, and 250 configurations which have been categorised as fundamental physics measurements that are relevant to criticality safety applications.

There are eight new evaluations included in the 2025 handbook: one benchmark for fundamental physics, FUND-LLNL-DT-H2O-PNDA-001; two new alarm placement/shielding benchmarks, ALARM-CF-AL-SHIELD-001 and ALARM-CF-PTFE-SHIELD-001; and five critical benchmarks, HEU-MET-FAST-106, HEU-MET-THERM-038, LEU-COMP-THERM-112, PU-MET-FAST-047, and PU-MET-FAST-050.

Experiments that are found unacceptable for use as criticality safety benchmark experiments are discussed in these evaluations; however, benchmark specifications are not derived from such experiments (in some cases, models are provided in an appendix). Approximately 844 experimental configurations are categorised as unacceptable for use as criticality safety benchmark experiments.

Catherine Percher

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

7000 East Ave. L-198

Livermore, CA, USA 94552

Percher1 (at) llnl.gov

Luke Yaraskavitch

Canadian Nuclear Laboratories

286 Plant Road

Chalk River, ON, K0J 1J0, Canada

Luke.yaraskavitch (at) cnl.ca

Mathieu Dupont

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

PO Box 2008, MS6170

Oak Ridge, TN, USA 37831-6170

Dupontmn (at) ornl.gov

Tatiana Ivanova

NEA Division of Nuclear Science and Education

46, quai Alphonse Le Gallo

Boulogne-Billancourt, France

tatiana.ivanova (at) oecd-nea.org

This handbook was prepared by a technical review group that benefited from the input of experienced criticality safety personnel from 26 countries, which have included over the years Argentina, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, the People’s Republic of China, Czechia, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, the Republic of Korea, Poland, the Russian Federation, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The handbook includes a description of the project organisation and a list of participants by order in which countries joined the ICSBEP.