Modeling of Neutron Spectra Based on Activation Analysis

Abstract

Safe and economical use of nuclear energy and particularly the development of GEN-IV reactors impose a better understanding of prompt neutron emission in fission, as well as of the fission process as such. Therefore, accurate measurements of the prompt fission neutron spectra (PFNS) are very important. In this work, we are testing the possibility to determine the PFNS by an activation method called DONA (DOsimetry and Spectroscopy using Neuron Activation) recently developed at IRMM (Wieslander et al., 2010, Lövestam et al., 2009). This type of modeling of the neutron spectra, based on the activation analysis, can provide new information about an old problem which still exists today, i.e. the discrepancy between measured integral and differential data (Capote et al., 2012). The problem is that the calculated average cross section for a certain neutron reaction, by using the differential experimental PFNS, in many cases cannot reproduce satisfactorily the integral measured cross section values. The modeling of the neutron spectra by the DONA technique was tested with the standard neutron spectrum of the spontaneous fission of 252Cf. We analyzed the sensitivity of the unfolding procedure to the initial neutron energy spectrum, the influence of the neutron scattering, the possibility of using different activation reactions and we also made an estimation of the lowest measurable neutron fluence rate.