Measurements of displacement cross sections of metals for 120-GeV proton beam irradiation

Iwamoto, Yosuke; Matsuda, Hiroki*; Meigo, Shinichiro; Yonehara, Katsuya*; Pellemoine, F.*; Liu, Z.*; Lynch, K.*; Yoshida, Makoto*; Yabuuchi, Atsushi*; Yoshiie, Toshimasa*; et al.

Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research B, 557, p.165543_1 - 165543_8, 2024/12

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nimb.2024.165543

The number of displacements per atom is widely used as an indicator of irradiation damage to materials in proton accelerator facilities. Experiments have been carried out on protons below 3 GeV to verify the dpa of metallic materials. However, the dpa for high-energy protons above 3 GeV has not been measured. In order to validate the displacement cross sections of metals in the high-energy region, the electrical resistivity changes of aluminium, copper and tungsten wires at a temperature of 8 K were measured using protons with energy of 120 GeV. The results show that the conventional irradiation damage model of PHITS overestimates the experimental data. On the other hand, the calculation results using the athermal recombination correction model were in agreement with the experimental data.

Japanese Evaluated Nuclear Data Library version 5; JENDL-5

Iwamoto, Osamu; Iwamoto, Nobuyuki; Kunieda, Satoshi; Minato, Futoshi; Nakayama, Shinsuke; Abe, Yutaka*; Tsubakihara, Kosuke*; Okumura, Shin*; Ishizuka, Chikako*; Yoshida, Tadashi*; et al.

Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology, 60(1), p.1 - 60, 2023/01

https://doi.org/10.1080/00223131.2022.2141903

Hyperfine splitting and nuclear spin polarization in NdPdAl and NdPdGe

Metoki, Naoto; Shibata, Kaoru; Matsuura, Masato*; Kitazawa, Hideaki*; Suzuki, Hiroyuki*; Yamauchi, Hiroki; Hagihara, Masato; Frontzek, M. D.*; Matsuda, Masaaki*

Journal of the Physical Society of Japan, 91(5), p.054710_1 - 054710_6, 2022/05

https://doi.org/10.7566/JPSJ.91.054710

Hyperfine splitting of Nd nuclei in NdPdAl has been studied by means of high-resolution neutron spectroscopy. We observed inelastic peaks at eV coming from the hyperfine splitting in the magnetically ordered phase due to the hyperfine interactions between Nd nuclei (=7/2) and the 4 electrons with ground state composed of mainly . At very low temperatures, nuclear spin of Nd is polarized with increasing occupation probability of low energy levels and contributes to the enhancement of the antiferromagnetic Bragg intensities: the elastic non-spin-flip channel is dominant. As an application of this phenomenon, we determined the Nd moment and hyperfine splitting from the temperature dependence of an antiferromagnetic Bragg intensities for NdPdGe.

Nuclide production cross section of Lu target irradiated with 0.4-, 1.3-, 2.2-, and 3.0-GeV protons

Takeshita, Hayato; Meigo, Shinichiro; Matsuda, Hiroki; Iwamoto, Hiroki; Nakano, Keita; Watanabe, Yukinobu*; Maekawa, Fujio

JAEA-Conf 2021-001, p.207 - 212, 2022/03

https://doi.org/10.11484/jaea-conf-2021-001

Prediction of nuclide production of spallation products by high-energy proton injection plays a fundamental and important role in shielding design of high-intensity proton accelerator facilities such as accelerator driven nuclear transmutation system (ADS). Since the prediction accuracy of the nuclear reaction models used in the production quantity prediction simulation is insufficient, it is necessary to improve the nuclear reaction models. We have measured nuclide production cross sections for various target materials with the aim of acquiring experimental data and improving nuclear reaction models. In this study, 1.3-, 2.2- and 3.0-GeV proton beams were irradiated to Lu target, and nuclide production cross-section data were acquired by the activation method. The measured data were compared with several nuclear reaction models used in Monte Carlo particle transport calculation codes to grasp the current prediction accuracy and to study how the nuclear reaction model could be improved.

Research for improving the safety of accelerator facilities; Evaluation of radiation damage on metallic structural materials with high accuracy

Meigo, Shinichiro; Iwamoto, Yosuke; Matsuda, Hiroki

Isotope News, (774), p.27 - 31, 2021/04

https://www.jrias.or.jp/books/cat3/2021/774.html

no abstracts in English

Measurement of nuclide production cross-sections of Fe for 0.4-3.0 GeV protons in J-PARC

Matsuda, Hiroki; Takeshita, Hayato*; Meigo, Shinichiro; Maekawa, Fujio; Iwamoto, Hiroki

JPS Conference Proceedings (Internet), 33, p.011047_1 - 011047_6, 2021/03

https://doi.org/10.7566/JPSCP.33.011047

Accurate nuclide production cross-section data are required for the design of Accelerator-Driven nuclear transmutation System (ADS) such as the design of radioactive waste disposal, design of remote-handling procedure of highly activated components, and evaluation of exposure doses of rad-workers. Although much efforts have been devoted to nuclide production cross-section measurements so far, uncertainties of the measured data are sometimes large as several tens percentage, and there is no experimental data in the GeV energy region even for some of important nuclides. In this study, proton induced nuclide production cross-section of iron, which is the most important constituent element of steel, was measured. The present experiment was compared with calculations by the PHITS code with several physics models including Bertini and INCL4.6 and evaluated nuclear data JENDL-HE/2007. The most significant discrepancy found in this study was the production cross sections via the (p,xn) reaction. It was suggested that further improvements, such as the in-medium effect on the nucleon-nucleon scattering and the Pauli blocking, were required in the intra-nuclear cascade models used in this study.

Measurements of displacement cross section of tungsten under 389-MeV proton irradiation and thermal damage recovery

Iwamoto, Yosuke; Yoshida, Makoto*; Matsuda, Hiroki; Meigo, Shinichiro; Satoh, Daiki; Yashima, Hiroshi*; Yabuuchi, Atsushi*; Shima, Tatsushi*

Materials Science Forum, 1024, p.95 - 101, 2021/03

https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/MSF.1024.95

To predict the lifetime of target materials in high-energy radiation environments at spallation neutron sources, radiation transport codes such as PHITS are used to calculate the displacements per atom (DPA) value. In this work, to validate calculated DPA values of tungsten, we implemented 0.25-mm-diameter wire sample of tungsten in a proton irradiation device with a Gifford-McMahon cryocooler and measured the defect-induced electrical resistivity changes related to the displacement cross section using 389-MeV protons at 10 K. As well as our previous results for aluminum and copper, calculated results with defect production efficiencies provided good agreements with experimental data. Based on measurements of recovery of the defects through annealing, about 85% of the damage remained at 60 K, and the same tendency is observed in other experimental result for reactor neutron irradiation.

Measurement of displacement cross-sections of copper and iron for proton with kinetic energies in the range 0.4 - 3 GeV

Matsuda, Hiroki; Meigo, Shinichiro; Iwamoto, Yosuke; Yoshida, Makoto*; Hasegawa, Shoichi; Maekawa, Fujio; Iwamoto, Hiroki; Nakamoto, Tatsushi*; Ishida, Taku*; Makimura, Shunsuke*

Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology, 57(10), p.1141 - 1151, 2020/10

https://doi.org/10.1080/00223131.2020.1771453

To estimate the structural damages of materials in accelerator facilities, displacement per atom (dpa) is widely employed as a damage index, calculated based on the displacement cross-section obtained using a calculation model. Although dpa is applied as standard, the experimental data of the displacement cross-section for a proton in the energy region above 20 MeV are scarce. Among the calculation models, difference of about factor 8 exist, so that the experimental data of the cross-section are crucial to validate the model. To obtain the displacement cross-section, we conducted experiments at J-PARC. The displacement cross-section of copper and iron was successfully obtained for a proton projectile with the kinetic energies, 0.4 - 3 GeV. The results were compared with those obtained using the widely utilized Norgertt-Robinson-Torrens (NRT) model and the athermal-recombination-corrected (arc) model based on molecular dynamics. It was found that the NRT model overestimates the present displacement cross-section by 3.5 times. The calculation results obtained using with the arc model based on the Nordlund parameter show remarkable agreement with the experimental data. It can be concluded that the arc model must be employed for the dpa calculation for the damage estimation of copper and iron.

Measurement of displacement cross section of structural materials utilized in the proton accelerator facilities with the kinematic energy above 400 MeV

Meigo, Shinichiro; Matsuda, Hiroki; Iwamoto, Yosuke; Yoshida, Makoto*; Hasegawa, Shoichi; Maekawa, Fujio; Iwamoto, Hiroki; Nakamoto, Tatsushi*; Ishida, Taku*; Makimura, Shunsuke*

EPJ Web of Conferences, 239, p.06006_1 - 06006_4, 2020/09

https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202023906006

R&D of the beam window is crucial in the ADS, which serves as a partition between the accelerator and the target region. Although the displacement per atom (DPA) is used to evaluate the damage on the window, experimental data on the displacement cross section is scarce in the energy region above 20 MeV. We started to measure the displacement cross section for the protons in the energy region between 0.4 to 3 GeV. The displacement cross section can be derived by resistivity change divided by the proton flux and the resistivity change per Frankel pair on cryo-cooled sample to maintain damage. Experiments were conducted at the 3 GeV proton synchrotron at the J-PARC Center, and copper was used as samples. As a result of comparison between the present experiment and the calculation of the NRT model, which is widely used for calculation of the displacement cross section, it was found that the calculation of the NRT model overestimated the experiment by about 3 times.

The -electron state of the heavy fermion superconductor NpPdAl and the isostructural family

Metoki, Naoto; Aczel, A. A.*; Aoki, Dai*; Chi, S.*; Fernandez-Baca, J. A.*; Griveau, J.-C.*; Hagihara, Masato*; Hong, T.*; Haga, Yoshinori; Ikeuchi, Kazuhiko*; et al.

JPS Conference Proceedings (Internet), 30, p.011123_1 - 011123_6, 2020/03

https://doi.org/10.7566/JPSCP.30.011123

Rare earths (4) and actinides (5) provide variety of interesting states realized with competing interactions between the increasing number of electrons. Since crystal field splitting of many-body electron system is smaller than the bandwidth, (1) high resolution experiments are needed, (2) essentially no clear spectrum with well defined peaks is expected in itinerant Ce and U compounds, and (3) Np and Pu is strictly regulated. Therefore, systematic research on magnetic excitations by neutron scattering experiments of localized compounds and rare earth iso-structural reference is useful. We describe the electron states of heavy electron compounds NpPdAl and actinide and rare earth based iso-structural family.