Nuclear absorption cross section

E energy of the level, Tt/2- half-life, a internal conversion coefficient, a natural abundance, / nuclear spin, Q nuclear quadrupole moment, b barn, /i nuclear magnetic moment, fin nuclear magneton, Co - nuclear absorption cross section. Wo- natural line width expressed as Doppler-speed interval. Absence of sign in the Q and n values means that the sign is undetermined (Cohen and Taylor 1987 Raghavan 1989 Pyykko 2001, 2008 NuDat 2009). 

Beryllium is used in nuclear reactors as a reflector or moderator for it has a low thermal neutron absorption cross section. 

Commercial-grade zirconium contains from 1 to 3% hafnium. Zirconium has a low absorption cross section for neutrons, and is therefore used for nuclear energy applications, such as for... 

Because the element not only has a good absorption cross section for thermal neutrons (almost 600 times that of zirconium), but also excellent mechanical properties and is extremely corrosion-resistant, hafnium is used for reactor control rods. Such rods are used in nuclear submarines. 

Boron trifluoride is also employed in nuclear technology by uti1i2ing several nuclear characteristics of the boron atom. Of the two isotopes, B and B, only B has a significant absorption cross section for thermal neutrons. It is used in " BF as a neutron-absorbing medium in proportional neutron counters and for controlling nuclear reactors (qv). Some of the complexes of trifluoroborane have been used for the separation of the boron isotopes and the enrichment of B as (84). 

Zirconium is used as a containment material for the uranium oxide fuel pellets in nuclear power reactors (see Nuclearreactors). Zirconium is particularly usehil for this appHcation because of its ready availabiUty, good ductiUty, resistance to radiation damage, low thermal-neutron absorption cross section 18 x 10 ° ra (0.18 bams), and excellent corrosion resistance in pressurized hot water up to 350°C. Zirconium is used as an alloy strengthening agent in aluminum and magnesium, and as the burning component in flash bulbs. It is employed as a corrosion-resistant metal in the chemical process industry, and as pressure-vessel material of constmction in the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Codes. 

Beryllium has a high x-ray permeabiUty approximately seventeen times greater than that of aluminum. Natural beryUium contains 100% of the Be isotope. The principal isotopes and respective half-life are Be, 0.4 s Be, 53 d Be, 10 5 Be, stable Be, 2.5 x 10 yr. Beryllium can serve as a neutron source through either the (Oi,n) or (n,2n) reactions. Beryllium has alow (9 x 10 ° m°) absorption cross-section and a high (6 x 10 ° m°) scatter cross-section for thermal neutrons making it useful as a moderator and reflector in nuclear reactors (qv). Such appHcation has been limited, however, because of gas-producing reactions and the reactivity of beryUium toward high temperature water. 

Heavy water (p. 39) is now manufactured on the multikilotonne scale for use both as a coolant and neutron-moderator in nuclear reactors its absorption cross-section for neutrons is much less than for normal water [Pg.623]

In a Mdssbauer transmission experiment, the absorber containing the stable Mdssbauer isotope is placed between the source and the detector (cf. Fig. 2.6). For the absorber, we assume the same mean energy q between nuclear excited and ground states as for the source, but with an additional intrinsic shift A due to chemical influence. The absorption Une, or resonant absorption cross-section cr( ), has the same Lorentzian shape as the emission line and if we assume also the same half width , cr( ) can be expressed as ([1] in Chap. 1)... 

Zirconium and zirconium alloys are used in the nuclear industry, because of their low neutron absorption cross-section and resistance to hot water at high pressures. 

In the case of H in low-temperature deposited silicon nitride films, ion beam techniques have again been used to calibrate IR absorption. The IR absorption cross sections most often quoted in the literature for Si—H and N—H bonds in plasma-deposited material are those of Lanford and Rand (1978) who used 15N nuclear reaction to calibrate their IR spectrometry. Later measurements in CVD nitride films, using similar techniques, confirmed these cross sections (Peercy et al., 1979). 

Fig. 4. Comparison of hydrogen content measurements. The curves show IR absorption measurements, using absorption cross sections of Brodsky el al., and Fang el al., whose absolute calibration was done by NRA, and total hydrogen measurements using 15N nuclear reaction. Note the discrepancy that arises at high hydrogen pressures, because of the presence of hydrogen that is not infrared active. (Reprinted with permission from the American Institute of Physics, Ross, R., Tsong, I.S.T., Messier, R., Lanford., W., Burman, C (1982). J. Vac. Sci. Tech. 20, 406.)...

Particle-in-cell simulation, 154 Phonon stiffening, 36 Phonon-magnon coupled mode, 39 Photo-absorption cross section, 156 Photo-induced phase transitions, 42 Photo-nuclear activation, 173 PIC, 135... 

The extraction of deuterium from natural water feed forms an excellent case study of the application of large scale distillation and exchange distillation to isotope separation. The principal historical demand for deuterium has been as heavy water, D20, for use in certain nuclear reactors. Deuterium is an excellent neutron moderator, and more importantly, it has a low absorption cross section for slow neutrons. Therefore a reactor moderated and cooled with D20 can be fueled with natural uranium thus avoiding the problems of uranium isotope enrichment. This was the... 

The most important apphcation of this metal is as control rod material for shielding in nuclear power reactors. Its thermal neutron absorption cross section is 46,000 bams. Other uses are in thermoelectric generating devices, as a thermoionic emitter, in yttrium-iron garnets in microwave filters to detect low intensity signals, as an activator in many phosphors, for deoxidation of molten titanium, and as a catalyst. Catalytic apphcations include decarboxylation of oxaloacetic acid conversion of ortho- to para-hydrogen and polymerization of ethylene. 

The most important applications of zirconium involve its alloys, Zircaloy. The aUoy offers excellent mechanical and heat-transfer properties and great resistance to corrosion and chemical attack. This, in conjunction with the fact that zirconium has a low neutron absorption cross section, makes this ahoy a suitable choice as a construction material for thermal nuclear reactors and nuclear power plants. Other uses are as an ingredient of explosive mixtures, as getter in vacuum tubes, and in making flash bulb, flash powder (historical), and lamp filaments, in rayon spinnerets, and in surgical appliances. 

Many of the nuclear reactions that provide the energy of the stars also result in the emission of neutrinos. Because of the small absorption cross sections for neutrinos interacting with matter (o lhs 10-44 cm2), these neutrinos are not generally absorbed in the sun and other stars. (This loss of neutrinos corresponds to a loss of 2% of the energy of our sun.) Because of this, the neutrinos are a window into the stellar interior. The small absorption cross sections also make neutrinos difficult to detect, with almost all neutrinos passing through planet Earth without interacting. 

In the frame of the theoretical formulation, in which the Penning process is described by the local quantities V+ R), T(/ ), and V+(R), the total cross section can be calculated as either (1) total absorption cross section atotaI from the complex phase shift for scattering by the complex potential V(R)= V (R)- r(R) or (2) as the sum of the partial cross sections a(Pgl), a(AI), and a(QI), into whose calculation also V+(R) enters in the form of matrix elements involving nuclear wave functions in this potential. 

In Ref. [9] we demonstrated how one approaches the DCL for the CC absorption cross section, Eq. (31). In a first step, the overall time evolution operator exp(iHcct/k) has to be replaced by the 5-operator 5i(t, 0) which includes the difference Hamiltonian of the excited CC state and of the ground-state. Then, the vibrational Hamiltonian matrix appearing in the exponent of 5i(t, 0) is replace by an ordinary matrix the time-dependence of which follows from classical nuclear dynamics in the CC ground-state. The time-dependence of the dipole moment d follows from intra chromophore nuclear rearrangement and changes of the overall spatial orientation. At last, this translation procedure replaces the CC state matrix elements of the 5-operator by complex time-dependent functions... 

After having defined the partial dissociation wavefunctions l>(R,r E,n) as basis in the continuum, the derivation of the absorption rates and absorption cross sections proceeds in the same way as outlined for bound-bound transitions in Sections 2.1 and 2.2. In analogy to (2.9), the total time-dependent molecular wavefunction T(t) including electronic (q) and nuclear [Q = (R, r)] degrees of freedom is expanded within the Born-Oppenheimer approximation as... 

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