Special issue on accelerator-driven system benchmarks at Kyoto University Critical Assembly

The accelerator-driven system (ADS) had been proposed for producing energy and transmuting minor actinide and long-lived fission products. ADS has attracted worldwide attention in recent years because of its superior safety characteristics and potential for burning plutonium and nuclear waste. At the Institute for Integrated Radiation and Nuclear Science, Kyoto University, a series of ADS experiments with 14 MeV neutrons was launched in fiscal year 2003 at the Kyoto University Critical Assembly (KUCA). Also, the high-energy neutrons generated by the interaction of 100 MeV protons with tungsten target was injected into the KUCA core on March 2009. The ADS experiments with 100 MeV protons obtained from the FFAG accelerator have been carried out to investigate the neutron characteristics of ADS. This special issue aims at concentrating on experimental analyses for the ADS benchmarks at KUCA on the basis of most recent advances in the development of computational methods, and contributing to academic progress for ADS research field in the future.