Measurements of fission yields in the heavy region at the recoil ass spectrometer lohengrin

Abstract

In spite of the huge amount of fission yield data available in different libraries, more accurate values are still needed for nuclear energy applications and to improve our understanding of the fission process. Thus measurements of fission yields were performed at the mass spectrometer Lohengrin at the Institut Laue‐Langevin in Grenoble, France. The mass separator Lohengrin is situated at the research reactor of the institute and permits the placement of an actinide layer in a high thermal neutron flux. It separates fragments according to their atomic mass, kinetic energy and ionic charge state by the action of magnetic and electric fields. Coupled to a high resolution ionization chamber the experiment was used to investigate the mass and isotopic yields in the light mass region. Almost all fission yields of isotopes from Th to Cf have been measured at Lohengrin with this method. It has been extended in this work to the heavy mass region for the reactions 235U(nth,f), 239Pu(nth,f), and 241Pu(nth,f). For these higher masses an isotopic separation is no longer possible. So, a new method was undertaken with the reaction 239Pu(nth,f) to determine the isotopic yields by γ spectrometry. The results are presented in this paper.