  The impact of nuclear deformation on the momentum distributions (MD) of
occupied proton states in $^{238}$U is studied with a phenomenological
Woods-Saxon (WS) shell model and the self-consistent Skyrme-Hartree-Fock (SHF)
scheme. Four Skyrme parameterizations (SkT6, SkM*, SLy6, SkI3) with different
effective masses are used. The calculations reveal significant deformation
effects in the low-momentum domain of $K^{\pi}=1/2^{\pm}$ states, mainly of
those lying near the Fermi surface. For other states, the deformation effect on
MD is rather small and may be neglected. The most remarkable result is that the
very different Skyrme parameterizations and the WS potential give about
identical MD. This means that the value of effective mass, being crucial for
the description of the spectra, is not important for the spatial shape of the
wave functions and thus for the MD. In general, it seems that, for the
description of MD at $0\le k \le 300$ MeV/c, one may use any single-particle
scheme (phenomenological or self-consistent) fitted properly to the global
ground state properties.
