International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Research Applications and Utilization of Accelerators

4-8 May 2009, Vienna

Benchmarking the CEM03.03 Event Generator

K.K. Gudima¹, M.I. Baznat¹, S.G. Mashnik², and A.J. Sierk²

¹Institute of Applied Physics, Academy of Science of Moldova, Chişinău, Republic of Moldova
²Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico, USA

Corresponding Author: gudima@cc.acad.md

Following an increased interest in intermediate-energy nuclear data for many applications, the US Department of Energy has supported during the last decade our work on the development of improved versions of the Cascade-Exciton Model (CEM) which has led to our event generators CEM03.03 for transport codes MCNPX, MCNP6, and MARS15. Here, we benchmark CEM03.03 against all reactions included in the Mandatory List of the International Benchmark of models organized in 2008 under the auspices IAEA and discussed in details at the Satellite Meeting “Nuclear Spallation Reactions”, as well as against some other reactions not covered by the List. On the whole, CEM03.03 describes reasonably well most of the tested reactions. Therefore, it can be employed with confidence as a reliable event generator in transport codes used as “working horses” for ADS and other applications. However, our benchmark identified several problems to be solved to improve the predictive power of CEM03.03. Open questions on reaction mechanisms and future necessary work are outlined.

This work was partially supported by the US Department of Energy at Los Alamos National
Laboratory under Contract No. DE–AC52–06NA25396.