Program - Brookhaven National Laboratory

Visualizing the Connections in the Exfor Database
David Brown, NNDC, Brookhaven National Laboratory.
The EXFOR database contains many datasets (over 6160) in which the measured values are ”reaction
combinations”, that is, they are not an absolute measurement of an experimental quantity. Rather, they
are ratios of quantities, sums of quantities, or some other mathematical relation of experimental quantities.
These reaction combinations couple large numbers of data sets together in non-trivial ways. In this poster I
present a visualization of the coupled data used to derive cross material covariances for the COMMARA-3
library and I provide links to other, larger, visualizations on the NNDC website.
PR 51
The Fission Cross Section of 240,242 Pu in the Neutron Energy Region up to 3 MeV
P. Salvador-Castineira, F.-J. Hambsch, S. Oberstedt, T. Brys, M. Vidali, EC-JRC-IRMM, Retieseweg
111, B-2440 Geel, Belgium.
For a sustainable nuclear energy supply a combination of present light water reactors, future advanced fast
reactors and waste minimization in closed cycles with partitioning and transmutation is needed. This is the
view of the Strategic Research Agenda of the European Technological Platform for a Sustainable Nuclear
Energy (SNETP). In order to implement these novel nuclear systems and their respective fuel cycles it is
necessary to improve the accuracy, uncertainties and validation of related nuclear data and models. Within
the project ANDES (Accurate Nuclear Data for nuclear Energy Sustainability) a European wide effort has
been started to measure critical reaction cross sections identified as being crucial for the development of
innovative reactor concepts. The present work contributes to the improvement of the neutron-induced
fission cross section of 240,242 Pu isotopes. These fission cross sections have been identified in a sensitivity
analysis of many cross sections as being of highest priority for fast reactors. Target accuracies are very
stringent and are required to be in the 1-3 % range for 240 Pu and 3-5 % for 242 Pu compared to current
accuracies of about 6 % and 20 %, respectively. At JRC-IRMM, high quality 240,242 Pu targets have been
prepared and shipped to the different partners in ANDES involved in these measurements. At Van de
Graaff accelerator of JRC-IRMM several measurements have been performed to determine the fission cross
section of 240,242 Pu relative to 237 Np and 238 U. A Frisch gridded ionisation chamber and a digital data
acquisition system were used in the measurements. Since also the non-negligible spontaneous fission half
life of both isotopes needs to be considered, also measurements of this quantity have been conducted.
Preliminary results show an increasing of this value around 2 % for 242 Pu. So far cross sections for both
isotopes have been determined up to 1.8 MeV showing some discrepancies (up to 12 %) to the ENDF/B-VII
evaluation mainly for 242 Pu around 1.1 MeV where the evaluation shows a resonance like structure not
observed in the present investigation. The analysis procedure and the involved corrections of the acquired
data will be presented together with the preliminary results obtained so far.
Corresponding author: F.-J. Hambsch
PR 52
Neutron Capture Measurements and Resonance Analysis of Dysprosium
Yeong-Rok Kang, Manwoo Lee, Research Center, Dongnam Inst. of Radiological & Medical Sciences,
Busan 619-953, Korea. Tae-Ik Ro, Department of Physics, Dong-A University, Busan 604-714, Korea.
Guinyun Kim, Department of Physics, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 702-701, Korea. Y.
Danon, D. Williams, Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering, Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute.
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