Date of Award

3-14-2014

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Department of Engineering Physics

First Advisor

Stephen R. McHale, PhD.

Abstract

The total radiative thermal neutron-capture cross section of 185Re(n,gamma) was calculated from measurements of its gamma-ray spectrum following irradiation of a highly enriched 185Re target in the guided thermal-neutron beam at the Budapest Research Reactor. The cross section was obtained by first summing the experimentally measured partial gamma ray-production cross sections associated with the known ground-state transitions below 323 keV. Combined with the contribution to ground-state population from the quasi-continuum, which was generated by the DICEBOX statistical-decay code, the resulting thermal neutron-capture cross section was determined to be 84(6) b. This result is statistically comparable to previous works. Additionally, 12 levels and 54 primary transitions were newly identified in this work via the binding-energy test, thus improving the decay scheme. All observed primary transitions populating levels below 865 keV were used to perform an independent measurement of the neutron-separation energy, which was found to be 6179.45(30) keV. This result is also consistent with measurements made in previous works and with the adopted neutron-separation energy of 6179.7(7) keV.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-ENP-14-M-21

DTIC Accession Number

ADA598969

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