Speaker
Description
The long-term management of high-level nuclear waste will necessarily involve the transmutation of highly radioactive materials using accelerator-driven systems converting long lived radioactive waste products into short-lived or stable nuclei. Am is the most abundant, long lived radioactive product in high-level nuclear waste, but the neutron capture cross section is known with high-level uncertainty (>10 %), whereas uncertainties of approximately 2% are needed for transmutation.
Such studies presents challenges, including the difficulties of working with actinide materials and the complexity of analyzing the abundant resonance structures. We have made significant progress in producing and handling of actinide targets generally, and Am specifically. We implement solution combustion synthesis methods to make robust targets on a variety of backing materials. An initial measurement at the LANSCE facility, using the DANCE 4π array of 160 BF2 detectors and the neutron time-of-flight technique, showed that the purity of the target can yield precise cross sections, resolving the fine resonance structures in 243Am(n,γ). We intend to present our preliminary results.
This work is funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration under Grant # NA0004256.