Status of the ICSBEP, IRPhE, SFCOMPO, and SINBAD Benchmark Handbooks

Validation plays a vital role in building trust in the predictive power of models and computational methods. Validation of a code consists of modeling documented real-world experiments and comparing the code-predicted response to the actual, measured response. In this panel session, we will discuss how these experiments are evaluated as benchmarks and used for validation of nuclear data and computational methods. We will also present an overview of four benchmark projects that aim to document different kinds of real-world experiments, with four panelists who chair the projects: Catherine Percher (LLNL), chair of the International Criticality Safety Benchmark Evaluation Project (ICSBEP), Mark DeHart (INL), chair of the International Reactor Physics Experiment Evaluation Project (IRPhEP), Thomas Miller (ORNL), chair of the Shielding Integral Benchmark and Database (SINBAD), and Germina Ilas (ORNL), chair of the Spent Fuel Composition (SFCompo) project. Additionally, Rowdy Davis (UNM), will present on his experience being a benchmark evaluator for ICSBEP, having recently submitted a benchmark on the University of New Mexico research reactor.