Nuclear reactions relevant to fusion reactor candidate materials
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Date
2022-09
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G. B. Pant University of Agriculture & Technology, Pantnagar, Uttarakhand. PIN 263145
Abstract
There is a possibility to develop the fusion reactors which may offers the prospect of a long-term energy production. For the development of a fusion reactor the reactor material should have low radioactivity and high capacity to endure neutron flux. To predict material damages by nuclear reactions and model the reactor design, accurate and high-quality cross-section data are required. The present study is motivated to investigate the production cross-section of 53Mn due to neutron induced reactions on stable and unstable target nuclei as well as charge particle induced reactions on stable target nuclei with the help of a nuclear modular code TALYS-1.9. It is observed that neutron as well as charge particle induced reactions play an important role in the production of 53Mn. Moreover, the production cross-sections of 54Mn, 55Fe, 59Ni and 60Co via charged particle induced reactions have been calculated by TALYS-1.9. Default input parameters and all the six ldmodels have been used in the calculation of production cross-sections. The contribution of direct, pre-equilibrium and compound nucleus reaction to the total reaction cross-section are also studied and it is found that the contribution of compound nucleus reaction is high in comparison to direct and pre-equilibrium reaction. Energy differential cross-section (EDX) and double differential cross-section (DDX) of the natural Molybdenum for (n,xp) and (n,xα) reaction at 14.1 MeV neutrons energy has been calculated by optimizing input parameters of TALYS-1.9. From EDXs calculation, it is found that most of the outgoing protons and alpha particles have energy 5 MeV and 13 MeV respectively. DDXs calculated at 10º, 30º,60º, 90º and 120º shows anisotropical distribution of outgoing proton and alpha particles. In addition to the above, recoil spectra, displacement per atom cross-section and gas production (hydrogen and helium) cross-section for 90Zr, 93Nb, 98Mo, 180Hf, 181Ta and 184W have been calculated to estimate the reactor material damage. NRT method has been used to calculate displacement per atom cross-section. Recoil spectra show that (n,n’) and (n,2n) reaction channels are major cause to produce recoil nuclei. Gas production (hydrogen and helium) cross-section infers that production cross-section of hydrogen is higher than the production cross-section of helium. From above, it is concluded that nuclear modular code TALYS-1.9 is a powerful code to predict the cross-sectional data of long-lived radionuclides induce by neutron as well as charged particles and damage produced during reactor operation, which is important to develop fusion reactor design.