Neutron inelastic cross section measurements on 54Fe

Adina Olacel,Markus Nyman,Marian Boromiza,Arjan Plompen,Alexandru Negret,Maëlle Kerveno,Catalin Borcea,Luiz Leal,Philippe Dessagne,Gregoire Henning

doi:10.1051/epjconf/202023901010

Abstract

A 54Fe(n, n'γ) cross section measurement was performed at the Geel Electron LINear Accelerator of EC-JRC, Geel using the Gamma Array for Inelastic Neutron Scattering spectrometer and a 235U fission chamber for flux normalization. The experimental results are presented in comparison with talys 1.9 default and tuned calculations. The tuned calculation, implying modifications of the optical model parameters, improved significantly the description of the experimental values and led to interesting conclusions regarding the interaction of the 54Fe nucleus with neutrons. Since the results of these calculations were already presented extensively in a dedicated paper, the present article focuses on details related to the experimental particularities and data analysis procedure.

Highlights

Iron is an important structural material in the design of the nuclear facilities
The importance of iron is highlighted in the High Priority Request List (HPRL) [1] and in the Collaborative International Evaluated Library Organization (CIELO) project [2,3,4] of the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA)
The experiment was performed at the Geel Electron LINear Accelerator (GELINA) white neutron source [13] using the Gamma Array for Inelastic Neutron Scattering (GAINS) spectrometer [14] for detecting the γ rays and a 235U fission chamber (FC) [15] for flux monitoring

Summary

Introduction

Iron is an important structural material in the design of the nuclear facilities. Being a component material of stainless steel, reporting precise and reliable neutron inelastic data impacts on the criticality and safety assesments. The importance of iron is highlighted in the High Priority Request List (HPRL) [1] and in the Collaborative International Evaluated Library Organization (CIELO) project [2,3,4] of the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA). Both of them emphasize primary on the need of neutron inelastic data on 56Fe but acknowledge the importance of the data on 54Fe and 57Fe, even if they represent only 5.85(11)% and 2.12(3)%, respectively, of the natural iron [5]. It was concluded that the agreement is better when using the default input parameters than the ones deduced from a more microscopic approach

Methods

Results

Conclusion