Abstract
Numerous applications rely on the identification and quantification of fission products with the activation technique, where γ rays emitted in the decay are used to estimate the initial activity of the radionuclide of interest. I130 is a so-called blocked fission product, which can be produced only directly through fission, a property that makes it particularly attractive for nuclear forensics. A source of I130 was produced using a (p,n) reaction on enriched Te130 at the Brookhaven Tandem Van de Graaff, and its decay was studied with the Gammasphere at Argonne National Laboratory. Two new levels were identified, and over 25 transitions were added, removed, or replaced in the level scheme with intensity measurements made down to Iγ = 0.000 66 per 100 decays. The uncertainty on the intensities of the strongest transitions, those that are commonly used to quantify the activity of the radionuclide, was improved by a factor of 2 compared to the previous best assessment, and discrepancies in the literature values were resolved. A detailed angular correlation analysis further permitted the determination of a number of spin assignments for excited levels and mixing ratios for γ-ray transitions.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 064326 |
| Journal | Physical Review C |
| Volume | 106 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 2022 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Research and Development (DNN R&D), and by the Office of Nuclear Physics, Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy, under Contracts No. DE-AC02-98CH10886 (Brookhaven National Laboratory) and No. DE-AC02-06CH11357 (Argonne National Laboratory). This research used resources of ATLAS-ANL, which is a DOE Office of Science User Facility. We acknowledge the staff at the Brookhaven Tandem Van de Graaff facility for their assistance during the irradiation.