Measurement of the 235U(n, f) cross section relative to the 6Li(n, t) and 10B(n, $ \alpha$ α)standards from thermal to 170 keV neutron energy range at n_TOF

The 235U(n, f) cross section was measured at n TOF relative to 6Li(n, t) and 10B(n,), with high resolution (L = 183.49(2)m) and in a wide energy range (25meV–170 keV) with 1.5% systematic uncertainty, making use of a stack of six samples and six silicon detectors placed in the neutron beam. This allowed us to make a direct comparison of the yields of the 235U(n, f) and of the two reference reactions under the same experimental conditions, and taking into account the forward/backward emission asymmetry. A hint of an anomaly in the 10–30 keV neutron energy range had been previously observed in other experiments, indicating a cross section systematically lower by several percent relative to major evaluations. The present results indicate that the cross section in the 9–18 keV neutron energy range is indeed overestimated by almost 5% in the recently released evaluated data files ENDF/B-VIII.0 and JEFF3.3, as a consequence of a 7% overestimate in a single GMA node in the IAEA reference file. Furthermore, these new high-resolution data confirm the existence of resonance-like structures in the keV neutron energy region. The results here reported may lead to a reduction of the uncertainty in the 1–100 keV neutron energy region. Finally, from the present data, a value of 249.7±1.4(stat)±0.94(syst) b · eV has been extracted for the cross section integral between 7.8 and 11 eV, confirming the value of 247.5±3b · eV recently established as a standard.