International Conference on Nuclear Data for Science and Technology 2007
DOI: 10.1051/ndata:07613

Neutronic performances of the MEGAPIE target

S. Panebianco¹, P. Beauvais², O. Bringer¹, S. Chabod¹, F. Chartier³, E. Dupont¹, A. Letourneau¹, P. Lotrus², L. Oriol⁴, F. Molinié² and J.Ch. Toussaint<sup>2

1</sup>  CEA Saclay, DSM/DAPNIA/SPhN, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France
²  CEA Saclay, DSM/DAPNIA/SIS, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France
³  CEA Saclay, DEN/DPC/SECR, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France
⁴  CEA Cadarache, DEN/DER/SPEX, 13108 Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France

stefano.panebianco@cea.fr

Published online: 21 May 2008

Abstract
The MEGAPIE project is a key experiment on the road to Accelerator Driven Systems and it provides the scientific community with unique data on the behavior of a liquid lead-bismuth spallation target under realistic and long term irradiation conditions. The neutronic of such target is of course of prime importance when considering its final destination as an intense neutron source. This is the motivation to characterize the inside neutron flux of the target in operation. A complex detector, made of 8 ``micro'' fission-chambers, has been built and installed in the core of the target, few tens of centimeters from the proton/Pb-Bi interaction zone. This detector is designed to measure the absolute neutron flux inside the target, to give its spatial distribution and to correlate its temporal variations with the beam intensity. Moreover, integral information on the neutron energy distribution as a function of the position along the beam axis could be extracted, giving integral constraints on the neutron production models implemented in transport codes such as MCNPX.

© CEA 2008