Actinide Fission and Capture Cross Section measurements at ILL: the Mini-INCA project

Abstract

Fission cross section of short‐lived minor actinides is of prime importance for the incineration of minor actinides in high and thermal neutron fluxes. But due to the shortness of their half‐lives, measurements are difficult to handle on these isotopes and the existing data present some large discrepancies. An original method has been developed, in the framework of the Mini‐INCA project at ILL, to measure the fission and capture cross sections of minor actinides with low error bars associated even for short‐lived isotopes. This method lies on a quasi on‐line alpha‐ and gamma‐spectroscopy of irradiated samples and on the use of fission micro‐chambers. Coupled to a very powerful Monte‐Carlo simulation, both microscopic information on nuclear reactions (total and partial cross sections for neutron capture and/or fission reactions) and macroscopic information on transmutation and incineration potentials could be gathered. In this paper, the method is explained in its originality and some recent results are given and compared with existing measurements and evaluated data libraries.