Verification of FLUKA isotope production cross-sections by 50-100 MeV protons on low-Z targets

The MYRRHA program includes an ISOL (Isotope Separation OnLine) facility to be built at SCK CEN. The ISOL facility, ISOL@MYRRHA, will receive its driver beam from the MYRRHA LINAC. In the first phase of the project, this shall be a proton beam of 100 MeV and up to 500 μA. The interaction of such a high intensity beam with the ISOL targets will result in high production rates of nuclides that shall subsequently be delivered to experiments or be collected in the form of radioactive ion beams (RIB). The facility will serve a research program covering fields such as fundamental research in subatomic physics, research with radioactive probes in condensed and soft matter, and radioisotope production for nuclear medicine.

One key requirement in the current development phase of the project is to provide future users of the facility with estimates of production capacities at ISOL@MYRRHA in phase 1. At the core of such estimates are in-target production numbers. Owing to a general lack of measured cross-sections, in-target production estimations typically rely on models embedded in particle transport codes such as FLUKA.

The goal of this work is to verify cross-sections from the FLUKA code by comparing them with the few available measured data points, thereby determining the confidence level of in-target production estimations with this code, at these energies and for reaction channels applicable to low-Z target materials. Besides, the importance of the mother daughter decay contribution shall be verified by comparing cumulative and non-cumulative assessments of FLUKA cross sections. Also, two different FLUKA distributions are currently available to users and shall be compared.

Last but not least, this work will provide a reference with respect to which future improvements of FLUKA models can be compared for isotope production at ISOL@MYRRHA.

The detailed objectives are to:

• Retrieve and tabulate from databases and literature measured production cross-sections by protons in the energy range 50-100 MeV interacting with low Z target elements (i.e C, Si, Ca, Sc, Ti, V, Ni, Ge …)
• Based on an available FLUKA input, launch cross section calculations runs in FLUKA
• Compare cumulative and non-cumulative data
• Compare measured and calculated data
• Analyze possible discrepancies
• If any, identify missing measured cross section that are relevant for the production of medical isotopes at ISOL@MYRRHA in phase 1.