Fission reactions of natural uranium in a deuteron beam by activation detectors

Abstract

Herein, an investigation of a deeply subcritical uranium assembly irradiated by a high-energy deuteron beam is presented. The determination of the total number of fission events is a key task in these investigations. Thus, this study is focused on the investigation of the number of fission events induced by deuterons, neutrons, and protons inside the deuteron beam volume. To measure the number of fission products in uranium activation detectors, germanium gamma detectors have been used. Furthermore, the total number of fission events has been measured by applying Solid State Nuclear Track Detectors (SSNTDs). The new method for determining the number of fissions using activation detectors is compared with the SSNTD and Monte Carlo (MC) methods. The method estimates the total number of fission events and agrees with the results obtained using the SSNTD and MC methods. The experiments were conducted at JINR, Dubna, Russia.