Speaker
Description
MCNP6 (Monte Carlo N-Particle) and PHITS (Particle and Heavy Ion Transport System) codes are widely used for many real-world shielding problems at accelerator facilities around the world. Nuclear interactions are described in these codes by both built-in physics models and tables with evaluated cross sections and secondary energy-angular distributions. Over the decades, many validation efforts were made owing to the availability of shielding benchmarks to test the nuclear data and verify the accuracy of the codes. In the framework of reactor criticality calculations, particle transport codes and cross section libraries are well validated for low-energy neutrons. However, in case of proton accelerators, a little attention is given in the literature for the validation of these codes and cross section libraries for proton induced reactions.
Therefore, variety of proton beam experiments was used in this work for the comparison of calculations performed with both MCNP6 and PHITS codes. The experiments relevant to the energy domain and the materials to be used in the design of MINERVA facility of MYRRHA (Multi-purpose hYbrid Research Reactor for High-tech Applications) project were selected. The results of this study demonstrate that quality or accuracy of the physics models and proton induced libraries used for the proton interactions are prevailing factors to determine the neutron yield and transmitted flux and consequently the shielding design. It is also found that among the investigated proton induced nuclear data libraries, JENDL-4.0/HE nuclear data library produces more accurate results compared to the ENDF/B-VII.0 and TENDL-2017. Therefore, depending on the target material, SCK CEN proton library based on TENDL-2017 as covering broader range of nuclides than JENDL-4.0/HE library, is continually upgraded using the cross section data from JENDL-4.0/HE. This work confirms an obvious choice of JENDL-4.0/HE data for graphite.