Benchmark experiment on copper with graphite by using DT neutrons at JAEA/FNS

Kwon, Saerom*; Ota, Masayuki*; Sato, Satoshi*; Konno, Chikara; Ochiai, Kentaro*

Fusion Engineering and Design, 124, p.1161 - 1164, 2017/11

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fusengdes.2017.01.013

Copper is used as a material for superconducting coil in magnetic confinement fusion reactor and for accelerator-driven neutron source such as IFMIF. In our previous copper benchmark experiment, we had pointed out that the elastic scattering and capture reaction data of the copper had included some problems in the resonance region, which had caused a large underestimation of reaction rates of non-threshold reactions. In order to corroborate this issue, we carried out a new benchmark experiment on copper with graphite in the neutron field with more low energy neutrons. We measured reaction rates using the activation foils. We analyzed the experiment with MCNP code and the latest nuclear data libraries. As a result, the calculated reaction rates related to low energy neutrons, still excessively underestimated the measured ones as in the previous benchmark experiment. We also tested the nuclear data of copper modified in the previous study, where the elastic scattering and capture reaction cross section of copper. Then the calculated reaction rates with the modified copper nuclear data reproduced the measured ones well. It was revealed that the modification of the specific cross sections had been sufficient in the neutron field with more low energy neutrons.