Jules Horowitz Reactor, a New Irradiation Facility: Improving Dosimetry for the Future of Nuclear Experimentation

The Jules Horowitz Reactor (JHR) is an experimental reactor under construction at the French Nuclear Energy and Alternative Energies Commission (CEA) facility at Cadarache. It will achieve its first criticality by the end of 2014. Experiments that will be conducted at JHR will deal with fuel, cladding, and material behavior. The JHR will also produce medical radio-isotopes and doped silicon for the electronic industry. As a new irradiation facility, its instrumentation will benefit from recent improvements. Nuclear instrumentation will include reactor dosimetry, as it is a reference technique to determine neutron fluence in experimental devices or characterize irradiation locations. Reactor dosimetry has been improved with the progress of simulation tools and nuclear data, but at the same time the customer needs have increased: Experimental results must have reduced and assessed uncertainties. This is now a necessary condition to perform an experimental irradiation in a test reactor. Items improved, in the framework of a general upgrading of the dosimetry process based on uncertainty minimization, will include dosimeter, nuclear data, and modelling scheme.