The development of fusion technology is a worldwide R&D effort aiming at a future viable and environmentally friendly energy source. A crucial role in the development of fusion reactors belongs to neutronics, i.e. analysis related to radiation transport simulations and activation calculations for nuclear responses including heating, dose fields, material irradiation damage, gas production, tritium breeding, etc. Neutronics design analyses need to provide fundamental data for the nuclear design, optimization and performance evaluation comprising safety, licensing, waste management, and decommissioning issues. The availability of suitable and well-qualified computational tools and nuclear data for fusion technology applications is a pre-requisite to ensure sufficient prediction accuracy of the related analyses with provision of realistic uncertainties. Nuclear loads and shielding-related requirements could pose severe demands on design and operation of many systems, structures and components in fusion reactors. This is of major importance for radiation protection and shielding applications, relevant for the respective safety cases.
High-quality fusion nuclear data development and its experimental validation covers, amongst others:
- Fundamental research in nuclear reaction theory and modelling
- High-accuracy nuclear cross section measurements
- Evaluation of cross section data libraries with the corresponding covariances
- Full-scale processing with verification and validation
- Computational benchmarking
- Integral experimental validation up to the irradiation of instrumented mock-up components
The interaction of neutrons, gamma-rays, and charged particles with matter and subsequent phenomena in irradiated materials involve several complex processes falling into the domains of nuclear reaction theory, physics of radiation effects, and material science.
This Research Topic addresses open issues in the area of nuclear data for fusion technology, specifically for its application to neutronics design analyses for the ITER fusion device, the European DEMO fusion reactor, and the IFMIF-DONES irradiation facility which require high-quality cross-section data for reactions induced by neutrons and deuterons in the energy range up to ~50 MeV. Despite the TENDL evaluated nuclear data library, based on the output of the TALYS nuclear model code system, has gained a world-wide use in both basic research and applications including nuclear fusion technology, a need of its further improvement has recently been pointed out. Furthermore, in comparison to fission applications, both the energy range and the diversity of nuclear data for fusion technologies are by far broader. Specific nuclear data evaluations are requested to improve the TENDL files based to a large extent on automated calculations with the TALYS code using default nuclear models and parameters. So far, theoretical models are not (yet) capable of accurately predicting unmeasured cross sections for an arbitrary nucleus and in a broad energy range. Instead, the models still rely on high-quality experimental data, in particular for making proper choices of the models’ free parameters. Work on evaluation pipelines incorporating the treatment of model defects and relying on reproducible workflows with automatized processing and related verification and validation benchmarks is instrumental for the generation, maintenance, and quality-assurance of large-scale nuclear data libraries. Those general-purpose libraries are utilized to derive application-specific libraries, in particular for activation, damage and dosimetry applications with tailored verification and validation efforts.
We welcome all article types, including Original Research and Review.
The development of fusion technology is a worldwide R&D effort aiming at a future viable and environmentally friendly energy source. A crucial role in the development of fusion reactors belongs to neutronics, i.e. analysis related to radiation transport simulations and activation calculations for nuclear responses including heating, dose fields, material irradiation damage, gas production, tritium breeding, etc. Neutronics design analyses need to provide fundamental data for the nuclear design, optimization and performance evaluation comprising safety, licensing, waste management, and decommissioning issues. The availability of suitable and well-qualified computational tools and nuclear data for fusion technology applications is a pre-requisite to ensure sufficient prediction accuracy of the related analyses with provision of realistic uncertainties. Nuclear loads and shielding-related requirements could pose severe demands on design and operation of many systems, structures and components in fusion reactors. This is of major importance for radiation protection and shielding applications, relevant for the respective safety cases.
High-quality fusion nuclear data development and its experimental validation covers, amongst others:
- Fundamental research in nuclear reaction theory and modelling
- High-accuracy nuclear cross section measurements
- Evaluation of cross section data libraries with the corresponding covariances
- Full-scale processing with verification and validation
- Computational benchmarking
- Integral experimental validation up to the irradiation of instrumented mock-up components
The interaction of neutrons, gamma-rays, and charged particles with matter and subsequent phenomena in irradiated materials involve several complex processes falling into the domains of nuclear reaction theory, physics of radiation effects, and material science.
This Research Topic addresses open issues in the area of nuclear data for fusion technology, specifically for its application to neutronics design analyses for the ITER fusion device, the European DEMO fusion reactor, and the IFMIF-DONES irradiation facility which require high-quality cross-section data for reactions induced by neutrons and deuterons in the energy range up to ~50 MeV. Despite the TENDL evaluated nuclear data library, based on the output of the TALYS nuclear model code system, has gained a world-wide use in both basic research and applications including nuclear fusion technology, a need of its further improvement has recently been pointed out. Furthermore, in comparison to fission applications, both the energy range and the diversity of nuclear data for fusion technologies are by far broader. Specific nuclear data evaluations are requested to improve the TENDL files based to a large extent on automated calculations with the TALYS code using default nuclear models and parameters. So far, theoretical models are not (yet) capable of accurately predicting unmeasured cross sections for an arbitrary nucleus and in a broad energy range. Instead, the models still rely on high-quality experimental data, in particular for making proper choices of the models’ free parameters. Work on evaluation pipelines incorporating the treatment of model defects and relying on reproducible workflows with automatized processing and related verification and validation benchmarks is instrumental for the generation, maintenance, and quality-assurance of large-scale nuclear data libraries. Those general-purpose libraries are utilized to derive application-specific libraries, in particular for activation, damage and dosimetry applications with tailored verification and validation efforts.
We welcome all article types, including Original Research and Review.