Measuring Neutron Absorption Cross Sections of Natural Platinum via Neutron Activation Analysis By Nick Petersen A thesis submitted to Oregon State University Department of Physics Corvallis, Oregon In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Science Presented June 11, 2012 Commencement June 17, 2012 Abstract: This thesis presents a measurement of the resonance integral and thermal cross section – which together represent the total neutron absorption cross section – of the naturally occurring isotopes of platinum that emit gamma radiation upon neutron absorption. The measurements were made via neutron activation analysis. Platinum samples were bombarded by neutrons produced in Oregon State University’s TRIGA nuclear reactor. Afterwards, the decay of the excited samples was measured to determine the activity of each isotope, yielding measurements of the cross sections for each. This experiment was repeated multiple times in different reactor locations to improve accuracy. Previous measurements of these values have been flawed by poor photon detector resolution, and evolving branching ratios, half-lives, natural abundances. A search of the literature reveals poor agreement and large error estimations. The results from this thesis are consistent, with one exception: there appears to be a systematic disagreement between the resonance integral measurements of samples bombarded in two different reactor locations. This discrepancy has now been seen in several experiments, which indicates inconsistent epithermal flux throughout OSU’s reactor. i TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 MOTIVATION .............................................................................................................................................. 1 1.2 CROSS SECTION AND NEUTRON ENERGY .................................................................................................... 2 1.3 DECAY SCHEME AND NUCLEAR SPIN .......................................................................................................... 5 1.4 PLATINUM ISOTOPES ................................................................................................................................... 6 2 EXPERIMENTAL METHODS .................................................................................................................................... 8 2.1 EXPERIMENT OVERVIEW............................................................................................................................. 8 2.2 INDEPENDENT EXPERIMENTS ...................................................................................................................... 8 2.3 FLUX MONITORS ....................................................................................................................................... 11 2.4 CAPTURE OF GAMMA SPECTRA ................................................................................................................ 11 2.4 DATA ANALYSIS ....................................................................................................................................... 12 2.5 DETECTOR EFFICIENCY ............................................................................................................................. 14 3 RESULTS ...................................................................................................................................................................... 16 3.1 CLICIT RESULTS ...................................................................................................................................... 16 3.2 CADMIUM-ENCLOSED RABBIT RESULTS ................................................................................................... 17 3.3 NON CADMIUM-ENCLOSED RABBIT RESULTS........................................................................................... 19 3.4 THERMAL COLUMN RESULTS ................................................................................................................... 20 3.5 UNCERTAINTY CALCULATIONS ................................................................................................................. 21 4 DISCUSSION ............................................................................................................................................................... 22 4.1 PREVIOUS RESULTS .................................................................................................................................. 22 4.2 PT-190 → PT-191 CROSS SECTION ........................................................................................................... 23 4.3 PT-194 → PT-195M CROSS SECTION ........................................................................................................ 24 4.4 PT-196 → PT-197G CROSS SECTION ......................................................................................................... 24 4.5 PT-196 → PT-197M CROSS SECTION ........................................................................................................ 24 5.6 PT-198 → PT-199G CROSS SECTION ......................................................................................................... 24 5 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................................................. 26 6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................................................................... 27 7 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................................................. 28 ii 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Motivation The neutron absorption cross sections of the naturally occurring isotopes of Pt (190, 192, 194, 196, 198) have not been adequately measured. Some of the values have been published in the literature only once or twice, and some of these measurements were done in the 1970s or earlier when technology (specifically photon detectors) was simply not good enough to do cross section measurements with a reasonable degree of accuracy. For example, the epithermal cross section (resonance integral)for neutron capture of Pt-198 to the metastable state of Pt-199 has been presented only twice in the literature and the average of the two is smaller than their standard deviation. See Tables 9 and 10 in Section 4.1 for more literature values. This thesis presents a methodical measurement of the neutron absorption cross sections of all natural Pt isotopes that produce radioisotopes following neutron capture (190, 194, 196, 198). Pt is noteworthy for the fact that when two of the stable isotopes (196 and 198) absorb a neutron, each product (197 and 199 respectively) has two possible product nuclei: a ground state and a more highly excited metastable state. The ground state of Pt-197 has a nuclear spin of 1/2 while the ground state of Pt-199 has nuclear spin of 5/2. In both cases, the excited metastable state product has a nuclear spin of 13/2. The ground and metastable states have different half-lives and emit different energy gamma rays upon decay, so the thermal neutron absorption cross section and epithermal resonance integral are considered separate for each state, even though the parent nucleus is the same. Pt-195 also has metastable and ground states with spins of 13/2 and 1/2 respectively. However, the ground state is stable and therefore cannot be probed with neutron activation analysis. Only the metastable state of Pt-195 was measured. For this experiment, the metastable state of Pt-199 could not be measured due to its extremely short half-life (13.6 s). It proved impossible to retrieve the samples and place them in front of a detector fast enough to record meaningful data. Also, the reaction Pt-192 → Pt-193 was not measured because Pt-192 has an extremely low natural abundance and Pt-193 emits very few characteristic gamma rays. 1 Pt is also a noteworthy element because the (admittedly flawed) current literature suggests that Pt- 190 has an epithermal cross section of a smaller value than the thermal cross section. This is highly unusual, as almost all nuclides have larger epithermal cross sections than thermal, usually an order of magnitude larger. It is important to verify these results to improve our understanding of nuclear systematics. 1.2 Cross Section and Neutron Energy The nuclear cross section is used to characterize the probability of a nuclear interaction with incident radiation. It has dimensions of area and is usually measured in units of barns, where 1 b is equal to 10-24 cm2. A larger cross sectional area means the effective nuclear area that incoming radiation sees is larger, making the probability of interaction greater. It can be used to describe the probability of absorption, elastic scattering, inelastic scattering, or the total of all three. In this paper, we are interested only in characterizing the probability of neutron absorption with subsequent emission of gamma rays; henceforward the neutron absorption cross section will simply be referred to as the “cross section.” The cross section is a function of specific nuclear characteristics and incident neutron energy. Slower neutrons with kinetic range in the range of 0 to 1 eV are referred to as thermal neutrons.