Effects of neutron spectrum and external neutron source on neutron multiplication parameters in accelerator-driven system

The neutron multiplication parameters: neutron multiplication M, subcritical multiplication factor k_s, external source efficiency φ^*, play an important role for numerical assessment and reactor power evaluation of an accelerator-driven system (ADS). Those parameters can be evaluated by using the measured reaction rate distribution in the subcritical system. In this study, the experimental verification of this methodology is performed in various ADS cores; with high-energy (100 MeV) proton–tungsten source in hard and soft neutron spectra cores and 14 MeV D–T neutron source in soft spectrum core. The comparison between measured and calculated multiplication parameters reveals a maximum relative difference in the range of 6.6–13.7% that is attributed to the calculation nuclear libraries uncertainty and accuracy for energies higher than 20 MeV and also dependent on the reaction rate distribution position and count rates. The effects of different core neutron spectra and external neutron sources on the neutron multiplication parameters are discussed.