International Fusion Material Irradiation Facility (IFMIF): neutron source term simulation and neutronics analyses of the high flux test module

The report describes the new results of the development work performed at Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe on the neutronics of the International Fusion Materials Irradiation Facility (IFMIF). An important step forward has been done in the simulation of neutron production of the deuteron-lithium source using the Li(d,xn) reaction cross sections from evaluated data files. The developed Monte Carlo routine and d-Li reaction data newly evaluated at INPE Obninsk have been verified against available experimental data on the differential neutron yield from deuteron-bombarded thick lithium targets. With the modified neutron source three-dimensional distributions of neutron and photon fluxes, displacement and gas production rates and nuclear heating inside the high flux test module (HFTM) were calculated. In order to estimate the uncertainty resulting from the evaluated data, two independent libraries, recently released by INPE and LANL, have been used in the transport calculations. The proposal to use a reflector around the HFTM to get higher dpa rate and lower spatial gradients was thoroughly investigated. The IFMIF neutronics parameters at different deployment stages regarding variation of beam intensity, footprint and energy have been estimated. (orig.)