About the production rates and the activation of the uranium carbide target for SPIRAL 2

In the near future, the accelerator and experimental facilities at GANIL (Caen/France) will be extended by a new facility called SPIRAL2. It will be based on a superconducting linear accelerator which will deliver a 40-MeV deuteron beam (5 mA; 200 kW). These accelerated particles will produce a very high neutron flux with a fast spectrum (most probable neutrons energy is about 14 MeV with an extension to 40 MeV). With the neutron-induced fission of the natural uranium, intense beams of neutron-rich nuclei will be created and will become available at SPIRAL2. In this work, done with the support of SAFERIB and EURONS, we present the results of the modelling of the uranium carbide target. The modelling was mainly done with the code MCNPX26B. The target is theoretically optimised to produce a global fission rate greater than 5 × 1013 fissions s−1. In fact, the optimised target, of 2.3 kg of carbide uranium, has a calculated fission rate closer to about 6 × 1013 fissions s−1.