MCNP6 Simulation of Reactions of Interest to FRIB, Medical, and Space Applications

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that MCNP6 effectively simulates various particle and nucleus reactions relevant to FRIB, medical isotope production, and space applications, validated against recent experimental data across multiple facilities.

Contribution

It provides validation and verification of MCNP6 for simulating reactions involving stable and radioactive isotopes in diverse scientific and practical contexts.

Findings

MCNP6 shows good agreement with experimental neutron spectra.

The code reliably predicts light fragment spectra.

It is suitable for applications in FRIB, medical, and space sciences.

Abstract

The latest, production, version of the Los Alamos Monte Carlo N-Particle transport code MCNP6 has been used to simulate a variety of particle-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus reactions of academic and applied interest to the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), medical isotope production, space-radiation shielding, cosmic-ray propagation, and accelerator applications, including several reactions induced by radioactive isotopes, analyzing production of both stable and radioactive residual nuclei. Here, we discuss examples of validation and verification of MCNP6 compared to recent neutron spectra measured at the Heavy Ion Medical Accelerator in Chiba, Japan; to spectra of light fragments from several reactions measured recently at GANIL, France; INFN Laboratori Nazionali del Sud, Catania, Italy; COSY of the Julich Research Center, Germany; and to cross sections of products from several reactions measured lately at GSI, Darmstadt, Germany; ITEP, Moscow, Russia; LANSCE, LANL, Los Alamos, USA. As a rule, MCNP6 provides quite good predictions for most of the reactions we analyzed so far, allowing us to conclude that it can be used as a reliable and useful simulation tool for FRIB, medical, and space applications involving stable and radioactive isotopes.