Validation of Product Nuclide Activity Calculations in IAEA Charged-Particle Cross Section Database for Beam Monitor Reactions

Abstract

For the 34 monitor reactions included in the IAEA Beam Monitor Reactions (BMR) 2017 dataset and the 22 reactions listed in the IAEA BMR 2007 dataset, product radionuclide activities were calculated using the IMRA computational framework developed in this work. The aim of this work is to independently validate radionuclide activity calculations for charged-particle monitor reactions by comparing results obtained with the IMRA computational approach against the reference activity data provided in the IAEA-BMR 2007 and 2017 datasets. The calculated activity values were then compared with the corresponding pre-calculated activity data provided in the IAEA BMR datasets. This comparison demonstrates overall consistency between the present calculations and the IAEA reference data across the evaluated monitor reactions. However, for a limited subset of monitor reactions induced by doubly charged particles (α and 3He), notable differences were observed when the IAEA BMR 2017 activity values were used. These observations emerged during the independent validation of the present computational methodology implemented in the IMRA code and are reported as part of a reliability assessment of the activity calculation procedure.

Figures (1)

• Figure 1: Schematic illustration of the stepwise displacement segments ($\Delta x_i$) defining the effective interaction volumes along the beam path. Each segment corresponds to a finite energy interval $\Delta E$, where the particle flux $\phi_i$ is evaluated at the entrance of the spatial step and $N_i$ denotes the number of target nuclei contained within $\Delta x_i$. The reference area shown in the schematic serves solely as a normalization convention and does not represent a physical geometric area.