Application of the MCNPX Monte Carlo code for studying the ADS spallation target parameters

Abstract EN

The Accelerator Driven Systems (ADS), although receive a great deal of attention of many researchers worldwide, is still in the development stages.

Transmutation of plutonium and minor actinides in the ADS is being envisaged for the purpose of reducing the long-term radiotoxic inventory of spent fuel in a possibly, cleaner and safer way than at present and producing energy and neutron sources.

High energy accelerators appear to be a promising way to incinerate heavy actinides.

The ADS consist of a sub-critical assembly driven by accelerator delivering a proton beam on a target to produce neutrons by spallation.

The target constitutes the physical and functional interface between the accelerator and the sub-critical reactor.

For this reason it is probably the most innovative component of the ADS.

The target design is a key issue to investigate in studying the ADS performances, namely the number of neutrons emitted per incident particle, the mean energy deposited in the target per neutron produced, the neutron spectrum and the spallation product distribution have been studied.

Therefore this paper reports some parameters of ADS used to drive sub-critical TRIGA reactor, such as best target geometry and best beam power using the MCNPX code.