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Article Dans Une Revue Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms Année : 2024

Neutron spectra from photonuclear reactions: performance testing of Monte-Carlo particle transport simulation codes

Résumé

The production of neutrons in photon-induced nuclear reactions in the giant-dipole-resonance energy domain remains a topic of high interest for various applications, including the activation and decommissioning of electron accelerator facilities, the detection of illicit materials for homeland security, and the evaluation of neutron dose received by patients in radiotherapy treatments. General purpose Monte-Carlo (MC) simulation codes for particle transport are intensively used to account for photoneutron production in these applications. However, due to the current scarcity of measured photoneutron energy spectra in the literature, an experimental validation of MC-simulated photoneutron energy distributions is not always feasible. Therefore, a critical benchmark among simulation results from various MC codes presently appears as the only option to systematically assess their capabilities in accurately simulating photoneutron production for nuclear reactions of interest. In this work, neutron energy spectra from several targets under irradiation by 20 MeV photons are simulated, employing various state-of-the-art MC codes (FLUKA, Geant4, MCNP6, and PHITS) in their default settings. A detailed analysis of the simulated neutron spectra allows one not only to assess the performance of various MC codes in applications such as those mentioned above, but also to partially gauge the incurred systematic uncertainty, and to highlight the present need for further evaluated nuclear data in this domain, ultimately suggesting precautions on the use of MC codes for applications where photonuclear reactions play a dominant role and where not only the production rate but also the energy spectrum of the emitted neutrons matters.
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Dates et versions

cea-04477575 , version 1 (26-02-2024)

Identifiants

Citer

Valentin Blideanu, Clement Besnard Vauterin, David Horvath, Benoit Lefebvre, Francesc Salvat-Pujol, et al.. Neutron spectra from photonuclear reactions: performance testing of Monte-Carlo particle transport simulation codes. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms, 2024, 549, pp.165292. ⟨10.1016/j.nimb.2024.165292⟩. ⟨cea-04477575⟩
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