Dissertation

Uncertainty Analysis Procedures for Neutron-Induced Cross Section Measurements and Evaluations

Biography

Amanda Lewis was a graduate student in the UC-Berkeley Department of Nuclear Engineering. She is a Rickover Fellow, and joined the Naval Nuclear Laboratory after graduating in May 2020. Her research focuses on uncertainties in nuclear data experiments and evaluations, including developing a new method to estimate uncertainties on evaluated cross sections for reactions that are measured by prompt de-excitation gammas (https://doi.org/10.1140/epja/i2019-12826-y). This method allows for both modeling and experimental biases to be included in the uncertainty on the evaluated cross section, and gives a more realistic measure for how well these cross sections are known.

Amanda spent two summers at the Naval Nuclear Laboratory working on a ¹⁸¹Ta evaluation and ²³⁸U inelastic modeling, one summer at Los Alamos National Laboratory working on experimental uncertainty templates, and a month at the IAEA working on quality checks for EXFOR.