A reevaluation of radiation damage cross sections

Abstract In the past years, INC models simulating spallation reactions have been undergoing considerable development, and their results are more and more scrutinized by experimental work. Recently, IAEA has led an international collaboration to independently benchmark various INC models. The preliminary results of this collaboration indicate that while the Bertini model performs well in predicting neutron production, it greatly lacks the capability to predict light charged particle emission compared to CEM’03 and INCL. This drives us to completely reevaluate the NCSU radiation damage cross section database, which was developed 7 years ago using a combination of CEM2k and Bertini models for benchmarking experimental data. The reevaluation currently involves just the CEM’03 model in MCNPX due our limited code access. Our preliminary results are in reasonable agreement with the NCSU database for the helium and hydrogen production cross section, but there are obvious differences for the displacement cross section. Such similarities and differences are being investigated, and the validity of the CEM’03 model for predicting radiation damage to materials is being examined. The reevaluated radiation damage cross sections presented in this paper are used in calculating radiation damage to the target assembly currently running at SNS, and the results are compared with those of previous studies.