Materials activation induced by high-energy neutrons: A comparison of ANITA-IEAF calculation with measurements from the Karlsruhe Isochronous Cyclotron

Abstract The validation effort related to the comparison between the predictions of the new ANITA-IEAF code package and the activity measurements obtained from the Karlsruhe Isochronous Cyclotron is presented and discussed in this paper. The code, able to handle the numerous reaction channels for neutron energies higher than 20 MeV, has been set up for activation calculations in the frame of the IFMIF facility. The validation was possible thanks to the availability of new experimental data obtained with neutrons of energy greater than 20 MeV. In this experiment, a thick target of natural lithium was irradiated with 40 MeV deuterons. Samples of two different steels, SS-316 and F82H, pure vanadium and a vanadium alloy were irradiated in the resulting neutron spectrum and the specific activities of many radionuclides were measured at various cooling times. The results of the comparison are presented and discussed.