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Beryllium metal and beryllium oxide are critical nuclear materials, with neutron-induced nuclear reaction data on beryllium playing a crucial role in nuclear energy research and development. Macroscopic validation is an essential step in the nuclear data evaluation process, providing a means to assess the reliability and accuracy of such data. Critical benchmark experiments serve as the most important references for this validation. However, discrepancies have been observed in two closely related series of beryllium-reflector fast-spectrum critical benchmark experiments, HMF-058 and HMF-066, which are widely used in current nuclear data validation. A previous systematic study indicates that these two series of experiments yield conflicting conclusions regarding the validation of neutron-induced nuclear reaction data for beryllium, creating ambiguity in improving beryllium nuclear data. As a result, the total 14 experiments in these two series cannot currently support high-precision validation of nuclear data. Even though most investigations on nuclear data validation and adjustment focus mainly on cross sections, the angular distribution of emitted neutrons is one key factor in reactor physics calculations. In this paper, we address these inconsistencies by improving the secondary angular distributions of the (n,n) and (n,2n) reactions for beryllium, leading to better agreement between theoretical calculations (C) and experimental results (E) for the two series with the cumulative χ2 value reduced from 7.58 using the ENDF/B-VII.1 evaluation to 4.52. All calculations based on the improved nuclear data agree with the experimental measurements within 1σ experimental uncertainty. With these enhancements, the consistency between the HMF-058 and HMF-066 series cannot be rejected within the 1σ experimental uncertainty. When combined with the latest comprehensive uranium nuclear data evaluation, this consistency is slightly further improved, with the cumulative χ2 value reduced again to 4.36. Despite these advances, systematic differences in the expected values of C/E between the two series still exist. C/E values of the HMF-066 series are generally 230-330 pcm lower than those of the HMF-058 series, comparable with their experimental uncertainties of 200-400 pcm. Therefore, drawing a definitive conclusion about this systematic difference remains challenging. If the current improvements in differential nuclear data based on experimental data of 9Be are accurate, the HMF-058 series experiments appear to be more reliable than the HMF-066 series. Ultimately, achieving this goal requires either a reduction in experimental uncertainties or the design and execution of higher-precision integral experiments.
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Keywords:
- critical benchmark experiments /
- neutron nuclear data /
- macroscopic validation /
- beryllium reflector
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