Microscopic optical potential for nuclear transmutation, fusion reactors and ADS projects

Among the high-priority elements for the accelerator driven systems (ADS) and fusion-reactor projects are also Zr, Mo and Li, so that the corresponding nuclear data for nucleon-, deuteron-, and α-particle interactions are of current interest for radiation damage estimation and radioactive waste transmutation projects. That's why this work reports on the progress of using the double-folding (DF) microscopic real potentials for nucleons, deuterons and α-particles on isotopes of these elements, within reaction cross sections calculations. The microscopic real optical potential, calculated within the DF model by using a realistic effective nucleon-nucleon (NN) interaction and updated structure models for α-particles, provides a good description of differential data of the elastic scattering of α-particles on A ∼ 100 nuclei, including Zr and Mo isotopes, over a large energy range from ∼ 15 MeV to 142 MeV. Thus, the use of the microscopic potentials in the nuclear data evaluation is validated. In order to improve the calculations of the D-Li neutron source term, the update of the d+6,7 Li data evaluation is carried out by calculation of the elastic scattering of deuteron on 6,7 Li, for incident energies up to 50 MeV, by using a microscopic optical model potential. On the other hand, the effective nucleon-nucleon interaction involved within optical potential calculations has been also used in multistep direct (MSD) calculations. Thus, single-Yukawa (1Y) equivalent NN interaction strength V0eq of the DDM3Y-Paris effective interaction, has replaced the phenomenological interaction strength, V0, which is the only free parameter of the MSD calculations. Description of experimental double-differential cross sections and emission spectra from the (n,p) and (p,p') reactions on 90 Zr and 100 Mo has been thus obtained without use of any free parameter, whose phenomenological values may compensate for the questionable handling of other quantities involved in the formalism, e.g. the particle-hole state-density, the optical potential for distorted waves, the DWBA matrix elements or the coupling between the preequilibrium emission chains. Moreover, suitable predictions can be considered for similar MSD double-differential cross sections and nucleon emission spectra corresponding to (n,n') and (n,p) reactions on 90 Zr and 100 Mo at the incident energies of 80, 100, and 120 MeV, where no experimental data are available. (authors)