Abstract
The majority of fission yield measurements to date have examined cumulative yields of long-lived nuclides. We present a method for determining independent as well as cumulative fission yields using gamma spectrometry and a Bayesian inverse analysis. This paper outlines the impetus for new fission product yield measurements, the methodology developed to measure these and other nuclear parameters, and initial experimental results for long-lived nuclides and sensitivity analyses. In initial scoping measurements, the cumulative yield of \(^{140}\)Ba was estimated as \(4.9966\pm 0.3309\) %, and the independent yield of \(^{140}\)La was estimated to be \(0.0045\pm 0.0022\) %. These estimated values are commensurate with existing literature values.
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Notes
Some values are not independent, and a multivariate normal distribution must be used with the appropriate covariance matrix. For example, the decay constants of radionuclides are used in computing the predicted nuclide activities as well as the measured activities, thus the measured activities and decay constants used in computing \(R_{\theta }\) are correlated.
If there was an unforeseen bias in the methodology or data collection, the estimation of the flux would be skewed. Using this value in subsequent analyses based on the same experiment would remove effects present in both analyses. Using the average flux determined using \(^{99}\)Mo as a standard essentially normalizes results using this flux value to the fission yield of \(^{99}\)Mo.
Recall, the uncertainty used in the prior distribution is three times the maximum literature value.
Sufficient convergence was obtained after 5000 samples. Thus, no additional samples were computed in order to conserve computational resources.
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Acknowledgments
This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under Grant Award Number, 2012-DN-130-NF0001-02. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
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Dayman, K., Biegalski, S. & Haas, D. Determination of short-lived fission product yields with gamma spectrometry. J Radioanal Nucl Chem 305, 213–223 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-015-3993-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10967-015-3993-9