https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/201714609008
Developments in capture-γ libraries for nonproliferation applications
1 Department of Nuclear Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
2 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California 94550, USA
3 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
4 Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University in Prague, CZ-180 00 Prague, Czech Republic
5 Centre for Energy Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1525 Budapest, Hungary
6 U. S. Army Research Laboratory, Adelphi, Maryland 20783, USA
7 Youngstown State University, Youngstown, Ohio 44555, USA
8 Technische Universit’ at M’ unchen, Forschungsneutronenquelle Heinz Maier-Leibnitz (FRM-II) Garching, Germany
9 Department of Engineering Physics, Air Force Institute of Technology, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio 45433, USA
10 Defense Threat Reduction Agency, Fort Belvoir, Virginia 22060, USA
11 Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA
12 National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899, USA
a e-mail: amhurst@berkeley.edu
Published online: 13 September 2017
The neutron-capture reaction is fundamental for identifying and analyzing the γ-ray spectrum from an unknown assembly because it provides unambiguous information on the neutron-absorbing isotopes. Nondestructive-assay applications may exploit this phenomenon passively, for example, in the presence of spontaneous-fission neutrons, or actively where an external neutron source is used as a probe. There are known gaps in the Evaluated Nuclear Data File libraries corresponding to neutron-capture γ-ray data that otherwise limit transport-modeling applications. In this work, we describe how new thermal neutron-capture data are being used to improve information in the neutron-data libraries for isotopes relevant to nonproliferation applications. We address this problem by providing new experimentally-deduced partial and total neutron-capture reaction cross sections and then evaluate these data by comparison with statistical-model calculations.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2017
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
