Evaluation of deuteron nuclear data on iron isotopes

Nakayama, Shinsuke

Fusion Engineering and Design, 230, p.115866_1 - 115866_6, 2026/09

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fusengdes.2026.115866

In fusion reactors beyond the experimental reactor stage, reactor materials are exposed to a large flux of high-energy neutrons. The International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility (IFMIF) is a material irradiation testing facility that utilizes an accelerator-based neutron source to assess the integrity of such reactor materials. In IFMIF, neutrons are generated by irradiating a liquid lithium target with a 40 MeV deuteron beam. For evaluating radioactivity production and designing radiation shielding in IFMIF and various precursor facilities, nuclear data on deuteron-induced reactions for iron, a primary structural material of accelerators, are required. These data include the production cross-sections of radioactive isotopes such as Mn-54, Co-56, and Co-57, as well as the energy and angular distributions of emitted neutrons. However, high-precision deuteron nuclear data for iron isotopes have not been available until now. We have previously evaluated and compiled deuteron nuclear data for light nuclei (Li-6,7, Be-9, C-12,13) for neutron source design and released them as JENDL/DEU-2020. Subsequently, we incorporated data for Al-27, Cu-63,65, and Nb-93 into the above data and published it as the deuteron sublibrary of the Japanese general-purpose nuclear reaction library JENDL-5. In this study, we evaluated deuteron nuclear data for the stable isotopes of iron (Fe-54,56,57,58). The evaluation was conducted using DEURACS, a nuclear reaction calculation code specifically designed for deuteron-induced ones, as in our previous work. As a result, the evaluated data successfully reproduced not only the residual nucleus production cross-sections but also the neutron emission spectra. In this presentation, we will provide an overview of the evaluation methodology and discuss the obtained results.