DEVELOPMENT AND DEMONSTRATION OF AN ADVANCED METHODOLOGY FOR LWR DOSIMETRY APPLICATIONS.

The methodology involves combining differential and integral dosimetry data, both measured and calculated, in a consistent fashion from various benchmark fields of increasing complexity, eventually including fields of operating power reactors. Covariances of all the data as well as sensitivities of the integral data to the differential data are required as a precondition to a meaningful combining process. This new methodology has the power to supplant existing methods of spectral unfolding because it can be used to obtain not only better estimates of the fluence and spectrum but also of the uncertainties in these quantities, and these uncertainties are always less than those using existing methods. This report demonstrates such an uncertainty reduction in describing the analysis of measurements made in three benchmark fields of high diverstiy.