A basic study on the nuclear characteristics in the accelerator driven subcritical reactor (ADSR) was performed through a series of neutronics calculations in view of a future neutron source in Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute (KURRI) for the joint use program among researchers of Japanese universities. In this series of calculations, it was assumed that three kinds of monoenergetic neutrons were isotropically generated at the center of spherical and homogeneous cores with different moderator-to-fuel volume ratios in order to examine the spectrum mismatching effect between injected neutrons and fission neutrons born in the subcritical core. The results of calculations clearly showed the spectrum mismatching effect on the neutron multiplication in the ADSR. (C) 2000 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.