Orateur
Description
The “Nuclear Data for Reactors” research group at the Institut pluridisciplinaire Hubert-Curien (IPHC) in Strasbourg (France) has developed a comprehensive and long-term experimental program to experimentally characterize the inelastic neutron scattering reactions. These reactions play an important role in nuclear reactor physics, influencing neutron slowing-down, power distribution, and material integrity. However, significant uncertainties persist in evaluated nuclear data libraries, particularly for key isotopes in next-generation reactors. After outlining the context and motivation for studying inelastic neutron scattering, and their importance for reactor applications, this presentation will present the γ-spectrometer GRAPhEME,developed at IPHC and installed at the GELINA facility (EC-JRC, Geel), detailing its components and the methods used to perform measurements on high radioactivity samples, with high level of background. A focus of the presentation will be a review of the experimental results obtained with GRAPhEME and their impact on nuclear models and theory. Including the 238U (n,n′γ) cross sections, which have brought new insights on the modelization of spin distributions and level densities in reaction codes ; Tungsten isotopes (182, 183, 184, 186W), where several complementary datasets have tested the models for deformed nuclei ; as long as 232Th and 233U, both isotopes at the center of the thorium fuel cycle. Finally, the presentation will introduce new data recently recorded at the NFS facility (GANIL/SPIRAL2), which extends the energy range for (n,2nγ) and (n,3nγ) measurements, and discuss future perspectives, including the DELCO project for measuring conversion electrons.
