CALCULATION OF PROTON INDUCED REACTION CROSS SECTIONS OF LONG-LIVED FISSION PRODUCTS USING EMPIRE CODE

Abstract

A systematic theoretical investigation of the excitation function of the Long-Lived Fission Products (LLFPs); which are problematic radioactive wastes in spent nuclear fuels; was performed with the aim of determining an optimal strategy for their transmutation in Accelerator Driven System (ADS)as a special technique for safe management and disposal. The (p,n), (p,2n), and (p,3n) reactions cross sections of some of the LLFPs, resulting in the transmutation to their short-lived or stable progenies, were calculated using EMPIRE-3.2atproton incident energy up to 200MeV with selected model and parameter considerations covering the Optical (OM), Compound Nucleus (CN) and Preequilibrium (PE) mechanisms. Dispersive and Relativistic consideration of the optical wave represented in the Optical Model Potential (OMP) were found to have no impact on the description of the Direct Reaction cross section from the OM. The PE model was best described with the HMS mechanism especially above 30 MeV while increasing the Mean Free Path (MFP) to 3.0 improved the contribution of the PCROSS mechanisms especially in reducing the peak cross section to reproduce available measured data. For transmutation application, the peak characteristics of Cross Section at Corresponding Energy is reported for this work as 468.33 ± 198.67 mb...