Measurement of radioactive residual nuclides induced in Cu target by 80.5 MeV/u carbon ions

Abstract

Radioactive residual nuclides, which are usually closely related to radiation protection and personnel safety, will be generated when target materials are irradiated by high energy particles. Based on different nuclear reaction models, Monte Carlo code is a usual method to obtain residual nuclide production. The simulation accuracy needs to be evaluated by experimental data. In this paper, an irradiation experiment of thin copper target irradiated by ¹²C⁶⁺ particles with energy of 80.5 MeV/u is carried out. The radioactivities and cross-sections of 18 radioactive residual nuclides are obtained by gamma spectrometry analysis. Compared with the Monte Carlo simulation by PHITS, the results show that the spallation model of PHITS has a high reliability in estimating the types of radioactive residual nuclei, and it could be optimized in the aspect of the absolute yield.