The present article describes the preliminary validation study of simulated in-core and reflector n eutron spectra in preparation of oncoming experimental programs in the zero-power reactor CROCUS at EPFL. For this purpose, a set of activation foils were irradiated at three characteristic positions in the CROCUS reactor, and the subsequent activities were analyzed via gamma spectrometry. The experimental setup was then modeled with the Monte Carlo neutron transport code Serpent2 and associated with an analysis tool to include the effect of the reactor power history during experiments.

The comparison of calculated and measured reaction rates (C/E) indicates a general consistency (at 2 sigma) between calculated and measured spectra. However, offsets of C/E values were observed in (n,gamma) reactions, up to 18% for In-115 and 8% for Cu-63 dosimeters. This could be caused by an unexpected isotopic composition, uncertainties in nuclear data, or the spectrometry analysis.

In addition, a 100-groups spectrum unfolding was performed using the experimentally determined reaction rates and the Serpent2 spectra as the prior knowledge. The unfolded spectra were mainly adjusted in the thermal and fast ranges, while few modifications were made in the epithermal region due to the low contribution of epithermal neutrons in activation processes. Moreover, within energy groups where the capture reactions show resonant behavior, flux depletion (up to 38% as compared to the prior spectra) is observed due to the absence of self-shielding effect in the unfolding process. For this purpose, an unfolding method based on energy groups weighting is developed and tested.