Investigation Into The Design Of An Accelerator Drive Reactor

Using the Monte Carlo N Particle (MCNP-4C2) code, we attempted to simulate an accelerator driven reactor that did not employ any highly enriched nuclear materials and used only high Z materials as reflector/moderators. We will discuss the results of a ``toy model'' that we created using Th, Pb, and U. Using a rectangular parallel-piped design, 55 MeV neutrons impinged upon a plate of $^{232}$Th to create fission neutrons. The fission neutrons out of the $^{232}$Th plate were moderated to energies around 1 MeV. These slower neutrons were introduced into a mass of fissionable material (such as $^{235}$U) where the primary criticality would occur. We calculated the relative neutron yield from each section and investigated the practicality of a Pb neutron reflector assembly.