Speaker
Description
Reliable and efficient tools are required to estimate radioactivity induced by high-energy particles in Spallation neutron sources, such as the European Spallation Source. As a first step toward the development of such tools, a radiation transport code must be selected and validated. To that end, the Particle and Heavy Ions Transport code System (PHITS) is proposed and evaluated against experimental data in the Spallation reactions range from 0.4 to 3 GeV. In this study, activation, nuclide yields and neutron production calculated with PHITS 3.35 are compared with experimental results [1], [2], [3] and previous evaluations made using other transport simulation codes. General agreement is found between calculated and experimental data in most cases. However, a clear trend for underestimation is identified in activation calculations. Possible explanations for these differences are explored, including nuclear data for low energy neutrons, physics models and decay calculation data libraries.
[1] Kasugai, Y., Kai, T., Maekawa, F., Nakashima, H., Takada, H., Konno, C., Numajiri, M., Ino, T., & Takahashi, K. (2004). Measurement of radioactivity induced by GeV-protons and spallation neutrons using AGS accelerator. JAERI-Research.
[2] Laird, C. E., Mullins, D. H., McGibney, D. B., Swartz, J., Kamau, R. W., Snead, C. L., Zucker, M. S., Ward, T. E., Franz, E. M., & Greene, G. A. (1998). Activation by Protons in Range-Thick Lead and Tungsten Spallation Targets. Nuclear Science and Engineering, 130(3), 320–339.
[3] Matsuda, H., Meigo, S., & Iwamoto, H. (2018). Proton-induced activation cross section measurement for aluminum with proton energy range from 0.4 to 3 GeV at J-PARC. Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology, 55(8), 955-961.