The FLUKA Code: Developments and Challenges for High Energy and Medical Applications

The FLUKA Monte Carlo code is used extensively at CERN for all beam-machine interactions, radioprotection calculations and facility design of forthcoming projects. Such needs require the code to be consistently reliable over the entire energy range (from MeV to TeV) for all projectiles (full suite of elementary particles and heavy ions). Outside CERN, among various applications worldwide, FLUKA serves as a core tool for the HIT and CNAO hadron-therapy facilities in Europe. Therefore, medical applications further impose stringent requirements in terms of reliability and predictive power, which demands constant refinement of sophisticated nuclear models and continuous code improvement. Some of the latest developments implemented in FLUKA are presented in this paper, with particular emphasis on issues and concerns pertaining to CERN and medical applications.