FY2018 Report on Fission Chamber Development at LANL

Technical Report · Thu Sep 27 04:00:00 EDT 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1475310· OSTI ID:1475310

Bredeweg, Todd Allen ^[1]

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1. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

This report provides a description of a subset of FY18 activities conducted by Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) as part of the Nuclear Physics: Cumulative Fission Product Yields (Fission R-values) task of the NA-22 sponsored F2016 Venture Project. Specifically, this report describes the design, fabrication and testing of the Mark II fission chamber that was fielded as part of fission R-value measurements on the Flattop critical assembly located at the National Criticality Experiments Research Center (NCERC). Historically, fission product R-value measurements were performed by chemical separation and beta counting of samples from carefully controlled fission chamber experiments. These measurements form the basis for reporting data used in debris diagnostics and subsequent modeling. It was also the means to extract absolute cumulative fission product yields (yield per fission or $$Y_i/f$$ for the $$i_{th}$$ fission product) that are included in the international nuclear data libraries, and ultimately used in diagnostic evaluations and device modeling. The challenge for this effort was to design a functional fission chamber given the harsh neutron and gamma fields and severe space limitations of the Flattop critical assembly.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
• DOE Contract Number: AC52-06NA25396
• OSTI ID: 1475310
• Report Number(s): LA-UR--18-29190
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS