Abstract
233U is of key importance among the fissile nuclei in the Th-U fuel cycle. A particularity of 233U is its small neutron capture cross-section, which is on average about one order of magnitude lower than the fission cross-section. The accuracy in the measurement of the 233U capture cross-section depends crucially on an efficient capture-fission discrimination, thus a combined set-up of fission and γ-detectors is needed. A measurement of the 233U capture cross-section and capture-to-fission ratio was performed at the CERN n_TOF facility. The Total Absorption Calorimeter (TAC) of n_TOF was employed as γ-detector coupled with a novel compact ionization chamber as fission detector. A brief description of the experimental set-up will be given, and essential parts of the analysis procedure as well as the preliminary response of the set-up to capture are presented and discussed.
Highlights
The Th-U fuel cycle [1,2] has been proposed as an alternative to the U-Pu fuel cycle for nuclear power
As the accuracy in the measurement of the 233U capture cross-section essentially relies on an efficient capture-fission discrimination, a combined set-up of γ-detectors and fission detectors was used, described in sections 2.3 and 2.4, respectively
The measurement was performed at the experimental area 1 (EAR1), located at 185 m from the neutron-producing target
Summary
The Th-U fuel cycle [1,2] has been proposed as an alternative to the U-Pu fuel cycle for nuclear power. The available data for the 233U capture cross section are scarce, as shown, because the measurement is challenging due to the competing fission reaction which is on average one order of magnitude more likely than the capture cross section, see Fig. 2. A new measurement [5] was proposed at n_TOF and performed at the end of 2016, aiming to provide a higher level of discrimination between the competing capture and fission channels and to obtain more precise and accurate data up to 10 keV neutron energy. A similar methodology of extracting the capture cross-section of fissile actinides has been under development at the DANCE facility at the Los Alamos National Laboratory [6,7]
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