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The GUINEVERE (Generation of Uninterrupted Intense NEutron pulses at the lead VEnus REactor) project was launched in 2006 within the framework of FP6 EUROTRANS in order to validate on-line reactivity monitoring and subcriticality level determination in Accelerator Driven Systems. Therefore the VENUS reactor at SCK·CEN in Mol (Belgium) was modified towards a fast core (VENUS-F) and coupled to the GENEPI-3C accelerator built by CNRS The accelerator can operate in both continuous and pulsed mode. The VENUS-F core is loaded with enriched Uranium and reflected with solid lead. A well-chosen critical reference state is indispensable for the validation of the on-line subcriticality monitoring methodology. Moreover a benchmarking tool is required for nuclear data research and code validation. In this paper the design and the importance of the critical reference state for the GUINEVERE project are motivated. The results of the first experimental phase on the critical core are presented. The control rods worth is determined by the rod drop technique and the application of the Modified Source Multiplication (MSM) method allows the determination of the worth of the safety rods. The results are implemented in the VENUS-F core certificate for full exploitation of the critical core. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

8 fission micro chambers will be inserted inside the central rod of the 1 MW liquid Pb-Bi MEGAPIE target in order to study the transmutation of two major actinides and to measure the neutron flux at a level of 5%. These chambers were developed for high neutron fluxes and tested at Laue Langevin Institute. © 2005 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fission cross section of short-lived minor actinides is of prime importance for the incineration of minor actinides in high and thermal neutron fluxes. But due to the shortness of their half-lives, measurements are difficult to handle on these isotopes and the existing data present some large discrepancies. An original method has been developed, in the framework of the Mini-INCA project at ILL, to measure the fission and capture cross sections of minor actinides with low error bars associated even for short-lived isotopes. This method lies on a quasi on-line alpha- and gamma-spectroscopy of irradiated samples and on the use of fission micro-chambers. Coupled to a very powerful Monte-Carlo simulation, both microscopic information on nuclear reactions (total and partial cross sections for neutron capture and/or fission reactions) and macroscopic information on transmutation and incineration potentials could be gathered. In this paper, the method is explained in its originality and some recent results are given and compared with existing measurements and evaluated data libraries. © 2005 American Institute of Physics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]