From nuclear physics to displacement damage calculation and uncertainty propagation in CONRAD

Abstract

Due to the importance of radiation damage of materials in nuclear facilities, it is of interest to accurately calculate the damage and the corresponding uncertainty. The CONRAD code is developed at CEA Cadarache for evaluating nuclear data and corresponding uncertainties using various methods. Different Displacement per Atom (DPA) models have been recently implemented in CONRAD to perform the calculation, the sensitivity analysis, and the uncertainty propagation of radiation damage cross sections. The current version of CONRAD is able to compute damage cross section and the associated covariance matrix from nuclear model parameters and from DPA model parameters. In addition to the sensitivities of damage cross section of 56Fe to different nuclear model parameters and DPA model parameters, the present work illustrates the importance of a complete covariance matrix between different nuclear data, while these correlations are normally not given in the current evaluated nuclear data libraries.

Keywords

• Damage cross section
• Displacement per atom
• Nuclear reaction models
• Nuclear data
• Sensitivity analysis
• Uncertainty propagation