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Title: Activation and safety analysis for advanced-fuel fusion reactors

Miscellaneous ·
OSTI ID:5655488

A D-{sup 3}He reactor has the potential to be an inherently safer fusion reactor due to the fact that most of the energy released in the plasma would be in the form of protons rather than neutrons. Until recently, activation analyses of D-{sup 3}He fusion reactors have focused on the radioactivity induced by neutrons produced from the D-D and D-T secondary reactions. Proton interaction with structural materials presents a potential source of induced radioactivity that has been ignored due to the general lack of cross section data for proton interactions with different target elements and the expectation that it would be significantly smaller than the radioactivity induced by neutrons. A computer program PTTY has been developed to produce a proton thick-target yield library. A wide range of experimental radionuclide production cross sections has been collected for protons with energies similar to those protons produced in a D-{sup 3}He fusion reactor. Proton energy-dependent cross sections were used along with the proton stopping data of Anderson and Ziegler to produce the proton-induced thick-target radionuclide activation yield library. In its present form, the library contains thick-target yield data for 164 radioactive isotopes. Even though most of the available cross sections for protons with energy {le} 14.7 MeV were those of (p,n) reactions, some cross sections for (p,{gamma}), (p,2n), (p,{alpha}) and (p,pn) reactions were found and used in the calculations. The library is linked to a second computer program PIAC that calculates proton-induced radioactivity.

Research Organization:
Wisconsin Univ., Madison, WI (United States)
OSTI ID:
5655488
Resource Relation:
Other Information: Thesis (Ph.D.)
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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