Speaker
Description
Nuclear data is an integral part of the activities in many disciplines,
including basic research, nuclear medicine, power generation, and others.
In order to meet the needs of practitioners in these fields, nuclear data must
be made available for their use and kept up-to-date. Doing so requires
that said data be produced and disseminated in an efficient manner.
Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) has a long history of producing
radioisotopes. The Brookhaven Linac Isotope Producer (BLIP) uses high-energy
proton beams to produce radioactive isotopes used primarily in nuclear medicine,
while the Brookhaven Tandem Van de Graaff provides heavy ion beams for multiple
applications.
BNL is also home to the National Nuclear Data Center (NNDC), which serves
as a central repository for nuclear data storage and retrieval. However,
BNL currently lacks a facility for conducting comprehensive and precise
measurements of the decay radiation emitted by unstable isotopes. Such a
capability would allow isotopes of interest to nuclear data applications to
be produced, analyzed, and included in NNDC databases in-house, creating a
mechanism for the rapid generation of high-quality nuclear data.
To address this shortcoming, a new decay station is currently under
construction at the NNDC. This detector system will be a multiparameter
spectrometer to enable complete and precise characterization of the radiation
emitted from unstable isotopes. Pixelated silicon detectors will allow the
detection of $\alpha$ and $\beta$ particles, while germanium detectors will
be used to detect X-ray and $\gamma$-ray emission. Data collection will be
performed with a commercially available digitizer system, which will minimize
dead time and enable pulse-shape analysis. Particle-$\gamma$ and
$\gamma$-$\gamma$ coincidence measurements will allow energies, level schemes,
lifetimes, and branching ratios to be precisely measured. In combination with
accelerator facilities at BNL, it will also enable reaction cross section
measurements by assaying the products of irradiation campaigns. The addition of
a decay station to the arsenal of tools available at BNL
will form a complete pipeline for the creation and publication of nuclear data.
The performance of the new system will be presented, along with first
measurements from the commissioning runs.
This Research is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science,
Office of Nuclear Physics under contract DE-AC02-98CH10946.