PNNL

Abstract

Fission yields are especially well characterized for long-lived fission products. Modeling techniques incorporate numerous assumptions and can be used to deduce information about the distribution of short-lived fission products. This work is an attempt to gather experimental (model-independent) data on the short-lived fission products. Fissile isotopes of uranium, neptunium, plutonium and americium were irradiated under pulse conditions at the Washington State University 1 MW TRIGA reactor to achieve ~108 fissions. The samples were placed on a HPGe (high purity germanium) detector to begin counting in less than 3 minutes post irradiation. The samples were counted for various time intervals ranging from 5 minutes to 1 hour. The data was then analyzed to determine which radionuclides could be quantified and compared to the published fission yield data.