Irradiation conditions of ADS beam window and implications for window material

Accelerator driven systems (ADS) are aimed at incineration of long living radioactive isotopes of spent nuclear reactor fuel, thus providing a solution for nuclear waste utilization. The idea is to couple a subcritical nuclear reactor with a high-energy proton accelerator. Protons interacting with the liquid metal target inside the reactor will produce neutrons with energy sufficient to transform long living fuel isotopes to those with shorter decay time. In some design variants a proton beam guide and window separate the vacuum of the accelerator from the liquid metal target. The window appears to be the most critical component of the whole facility as besides liquid metal corrosion it undergoes irradiation damage from incident protons, from protons and neutrons produced by spallation inside the target as well as from fission neutrons generated in the reactor fuel assemblies. In the present work we have evaluated irradiation conditions of the ADS beam window using Monte Carlo neutron, photon and charged particle transport code MCNPX. The code and the detailed geometric model of the experimental ADS (XADS) facility allow a realistic simulation of the spallation process and transport of generated nucleons as well as evaluation of various damage and operational characteristics like displacement damage, heat deposition, gas and spallation element production rates. Present results based on the reduced beam parameters provide a hope that apart from the liquid metal corrosion (not considered in the present paper) the window material could sustain full operation during the period of 3–4 month between replacements. These results may allow reconsideration of pro and contra of the window and the windowless XADS concepts.