Abstract
Natural, depleted, and low enriched uranium hexafluoride is manufactured and transported on an industrial scale to support commercial nuclear power plant operation. One-way material production and flow is verified by nuclear safeguards inspectorates is by neutron counting. The dominant neutron source term is (α,n) production due to 234U which gets enriched/depleted along with 235U. In this paper we describe recent efforts to accurately determine the (α,n)/s/g of 234U in UF6. This piece of nuclear data is of direct value to the nuclear safeguards community in the science-based verification and assay of bulk uranium hexafluoride. It also provides a benchmark on codes that calculate yield curves for various compounds from cross section data, and hence, provides a scale or normalization constraint on evaluated basic cross section data. In turn, evaluated basic data allows the yield from other materials to be calculated; for instance, moist uranyl fluoride, which is of interest in holdup measurements.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Article number | 161608 |
Journal | Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment |
Volume | 954 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Feb 21 2020 |
Funding
This work was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) , National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), United States , Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation, United States Research and Development (NA-22).
Keywords
- Alpha-neutron reaction
- Nuclear safeguards
- Uranium hexafluoride