Nuclear data requirements for accelerator-driven transmutation systems

The possibilities of several new technologies based on use of intense, medium‐energy proton accelerators are being investigated at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The potential new areas include destruction of long‐lived components of nuclear waste, plutonium burning, energy production, and production of tritium. The design, assessment, and safety analysis of potential facilities involves the understanding of complex combinations of nuclear processes, which in turn places new requirements on nuclear data that transcend the traditional needs of the fission and fusion reactor communities. In this paper an assessment of the nuclear data needs for systems currently being considered in the Los Alamos Accelerator‐Driven Transmutation Technologies program is given. The importance of developing neutron and proton cross section libraries in the incident particle energy range of 20 MeV to approximately 200 MeV for transport applications is discussed, and new theoretical methods for developing cross section librarie...