Speaker
Description
Fission-product yields are one of the most fundamental pieces of nuclear data associated with nuclear fission, and they play an important role in fundamental neutrino science, nuclear energy, nuclear medicine, and national security. One of the most straightforward and reliable ways to determine fission-product yields is via detection of the characteristic γ rays emitted following the β decay of the fission products. Currently, much of the nuclear data suffer from large uncertainties, which contributes to the uncertainties in the determined fission yields. We have developed a new experimental method [1] that takes advantage of radioactive-ion beams at CARIBU and a well-characterized detection system [2] to determine γ-ray intensities following the β decay of long-lived species to a fractional precision of 1%. We will present results for 144Ce and 147Nd and discuss plans for future measurements.
[1] K. Kolos et al., "New approach to precisely measure gamma-ray intensities for long-lived fission products, with results for the decay of 95Zr" Nucl. Instrum. Methods A 1000 165240 (2021)
[2] R. G. Helmer, et. al., Nucl. Instrum. Methods A 511 360 (2003)
This work was supported under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344 (LLNL), Office of Nuclear Physics Contract DE-AC02-06CH11357 (ANL), and DE-FG03-93ER40773 (Texas A&M).