Abstract
The results from modern nuclear theory are accurate and reliable enough to be used for practical applications, in particular for scattering that involves few-nucleon systems of importance to nuclear power. Using well-established nucleon-nucleon (NN) interactions that fit well the NN scattering data, and the AGS form of the three-body theory, we have performed precise calculations of low-energy neutron-deuteron (n+d) scattering. We show that three-nucleon force effects that have impact on the low-energy vector analyzing powers have no practical effects on the angular distribution of the n+d cross-section. There appear to be problems for this scattering in the evaluated nuclear data file (ENDF) libraries, at the incident neutron energies less than 3.2 MeV. Supporting experimental data in this energy region are rather old (>25 years), sparse and often inconsistent. Our three-body results at low energies, 50 keV to 10.0 MeV, are compared to the ENDF/B-VII.0 and JENDL (Japanese Evaluated Nuclear Data Library) -3.3 evaluated angular distributions. The impact of these results on the calculated reactivity for various critical systems involving heavy water is shown.