Neodymium neutron transmission and capture measurements and development of a new transmission detector

Neodymium is a 235U fission product and is important in reactor neutronic calculations. The aim of this thesis is to improve upon the existing neutron cross section data of neodymium.; Neutron capture and transmission measurements were performed by the time-of-flight technique at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute LINAC using metallic neodymium samples. The capture measurements were made at the 25-m flight station with a 16-segment Nal multiplicity detector, and the transmission measurements were performed at 15-m and 25-m flight stations, respectively, with 6Li glass scintillation detectors. After the data were collected and reduced, resonance parameters were determined by simultaneously fitting the transmission and capture data with the multilevel R-matrix Bayesian code SAMMY.; The resonance parameters for all naturally occurring neodymium isotopes were deduced within the energy range of 1.0 eV to 500 eV. The resulting resonance parameters were used to calculate the capture resonance integral with this energy region and were compared to calculations obtained when using the resonance parameters from ENDF-B/VI. The RPI parameters gave a resonance integral value of 32 ± 1 barns that is approximately 7% lower than that obtained with the ENDF-B/VI parameters. The current measurements significantly reduce the statistical uncertainties on the resonance parameters when compared with previously published parameters.; This thesis also explains the resolution function in detail and discusses its importance when fitting experimental data to extract resonance parameters. More accurate resolution function parameters were determined for epithermal transmission and capture measurements by fitting well known resonances in Uranium-238. Improved transmission bare-bounce target in-beam photomultiplier tube (PMT) resolution function parameters were found and compared to those used previously at the RPI LINAC and a marked improvement in the quality of the fits is shown. In addition to finding improved resolution function parameters, a method was developed to find the ‘estimated uncertainty’ on these parameters. The ‘estimated uncertainty’ values for the resolution function parameters were chosen to represent a + or −10% change in the reduced chi-squared value in fits to uranium.; This thesis also presents the design, construction, and implementation of a new out-of-beam detector (OBD) system for use in transmission experiments. MCNP modeling was used to validate that the OBD system has less neutron backscatter when compared with the previously used in-beam detector (IBD). This decrease in neutron backscatter offers an overall improvement in resolution function. Experiments were performed with the OBD system using uranium samples and resulting data was used to show this improvement in the resolution function.