Uranium and plutonium total half-lives and for the spontaneous fission branch

Conference · Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 1985

OSTI ID:5713031

Holden, N E

The long-lived nuclides of the uranium and plutonium elements are of interest for their use in nuclear reactors, as well as in certain safeguard applications, e.g., alpha counting is often used to determine the amount of material present. The total half-life and the half-life for spontaneous fission are evaluated for these various long-lived nuclides of interest. The various experiments have been reanalyzed and recommended values are presented for /sup 232,233,234/U, /sup 235,236,238/U, and for /sup 236,238,239,240,241,242,244/Pu. These values improve upon preliminary estimates previously presented, in particular with respect to the uncertainties reported. The /sup 234/U half-life of 2.456 +- 0.005 x 10/sup 5/ years impacts directly on the 2200 meters/second fission cross section of /sup 235/U, since earlier measurements used values of 2.47 to 2.5 x 10/sup 5/ years and obtained correspondingly lower cross sections. In a similar manner, the /sup 239/Pu half-life is 1.25% lower than earlier estimates, which results in a 1.25% increase in the 2200 m/s fission cross section for /sup 239/Pu in some earlier cross section measurements. The total half-lives for the uranium nuclides were reviewed some time ago. At that time, the only spontaneous fission value which was evaluated was /sup 238/U. Recently, the uranium and plutonium nuclides were reviewed for both total and fission half-lives. The general procedure followed in this paper has been to review each of the experiments and revise the published values for the latest estimates of the various parameters used by the original authors. For the case of the total half-lives of uranium, only differences from the original work have been discussed. 120 refs., 23 tabs.

• Research Organization: Brookhaven National Lab., Upton, NY (USA)
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-76CH00016
• OSTI ID: 5713031
• Report Number(s): BNL-NCS-36550; CONF-8506130-2; ON: DE85012273
• Resource Relation: Conference: International Committee for Radionuclide Metrology meeting, Grenoble, France, 3 Jun 1985
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS
PLUTONIUM ISOTOPES
HALF-LIFE
SPONTANEOUS FISSION
URANIUM ISOTOPES
ALPHA DECAY
EVALUATED DATA
PLUTONIUM 236
PLUTONIUM 238
PLUTONIUM 239
PLUTONIUM 240
PLUTONIUM 241
PLUTONIUM 242
PLUTONIUM 244
URANIUM 232
URANIUM 233
URANIUM 234
URANIUM 235
URANIUM 236
URANIUM 238
ACTINIDE ISOTOPES
ACTINIDE NUCLEI
ALPHA DECAY RADIOISOTOPES
BETA DECAY RADIOISOTOPES
BETA-MINUS DECAY RADIOISOTOPES
DATA
DECAY
EVEN-EVEN NUCLEI
EVEN-ODD NUCLEI
FISSION
HEAVY NUCLEI
INFORMATION
ISOMERIC TRANSITION ISOTOPES
ISOTOPES
MINUTES LIVING RADIOISOTOPES
NUCLEAR REACTIONS
NUCLEI
NUMERICAL DATA
RADIOISOTOPES
YEARS LIVING RADIOISOTOPES
652026* - Nuclear Properties & Reactions
A=220 & above
Experimental- Spontaneous & Induced Fission- (-1987)
652022 - Nuclear Properties & Reactions
A=220 & above
Experimental- Radioactive Decay- (-1987)