Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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Validation of the neutron lead transport for fusion applications

  • Received : 2021.05.10
  • Accepted : 2021.09.02
  • Published : 2022.03.25
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Abstract

Lead is an important material, both for fusion or fission reactors. The cross sections of natural lead should be validated because lead is a main component of lithium-lead modules suggested for fusion power plants and it directly affects the crucial variable, tritium breeding ratio. The presented study discusses a validation of the lead transport libraries by dint of the activation of carefully selected activation samples. The high emission standard 252Cf neutron source was used as a neutron source for the presented validation experiment. In the irradiation setup, the samples were placed behind 5 and 10 cm of the lead material. Samples were measured using a gamma spectrometry to infer the reaction rate and compared with MCNP6 calculations using ENDF/B-VIII.0 lead cross sections. The experiment used validated IRDFF-II dosimetric reactions to validate lead cross sections, namely 197Au(n, 2n)196Au, 58Ni(n,p)58Co, 93Nb(n, 2n)92mNb, 115In(n,n')115mIn, 115In(n,γ)116mIn, 197Au(n,γ)198Au and 63Cu(n,γ)64Cu reactions. The threshold reactions agree reasonably with calculations; however, the experimental data suggests a higher thermal neutron flux behind lead bricks. The paper also suggests 252Cf isotropic source as a valuable tool for validation of some cross-sections important for fusion applications, i.e. reactions on structural materials, e.g. Cu, Pb, etc.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

The presented work has been realized within Institutional Support by the Ministry of Industry and Trade and with the use of theinfrastructure Reactors LVR-15 and LR-0, which is financially supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports - project LM2015074, the SANDA project funded under H2020-EURATOM-1.1 contract 847552.

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