Lead benchmark experiment with DT neutrons at JAEA/FNS

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

Fusion Science and Technology, 72(3), p.362 - 367, 2017/10

https://doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1330622

Lead is a candidate material as a neutron multiplier, a tritium breeder and a coolant in nuclear fusion reactor system, and a ray shielding for beam dump or shielding of components in accelerator-driven neutron source such as IFMIF. A benchmark experiment on lead with DT neutrons had been performed at JAEA/FNS seven, where the reaction rates related to neutrons below a few keV had included background neutrons scattered in concrete walls of the experiment room. Thus, we designed and carried out a new benchmark experiment with a lead assembly covered with LiO blocks absorbing background neutrons. We successfully measured reaction rates of the non-threshold reactions with the activation foil method. The experiment was analyzed with MCNP code and the latest nuclear data libraries. All the calculated reaction rates (C) tended to underestimate the experimental ones (E) with the depth of the lead assembly. Although reasons of the underestimation have not been specified yet, we discovered that there are remarkable different tendencies of C/Es each reaction rate among the nuclear data libraries.