Future development of nuclear energy forsees implementation of a closed fuel cycle in the 4th generation nuclear power plants and Accelerated Driven System (ADS-systems), i.e. nuclear reactors driven by high-current proton accelerators with energies of about 1 GeV for burnup of long-lived isotopes in spent fuel. We report precision measurements of the ²³⁷Np fission cross section in the neutron energy range of 0.3-500 MeV using the time-of-flight spectrometer GNEIS created on the basis of the SC-1000 synchrocyclotron at the NRC “Kurchatov Institute” – PNPI. The fission cross section of ²³⁷Np was measured relative to that of the reference nucleus ²³⁵U. The uncertainty of the obtained ratio was 2-3%. The results cover both the range of 0.3-20 MeV (the reactor spectrum), which is important for today's and near-future nuclear technologies, and the more challenging area of 20-500 MeV, which is critical for the development of advanced ADS technologies.

Figures 1 and 2. ²³⁷Np fission cross-section in comparison with the results of other studies.

Vorobyev A.S., Gagarski A.M., Shcherbakov O.A., Vaishnene L.A., Tiagelskaia A.M., Olkhovich N.M., Barabanov A.L.
JETP Letters 120, issue 6 (2024)