A Study of Actinide Deexcitation Through Neutron Emission from the Deuteron Induced Fission of 238U

The process of de-excitation of the actinides is a very important question in
both pure and applied science. In this dissertation the process was studied using
the neutrons emitted in coincidence with fission induced by the bombardment of
238U with 14.85 MeV deuterons. Neutrons can be emitted at multiple stages during
the de-excitation process, with each stage producing its own unique neutron spectrum.
The neutron spectrum in the lab frame is broken down into its constituent
components using kinematic corrections to place them in their own reference frame.
It was found that 5.270 ± 0.14 prompt neutrons are emitted per fission with
an average source temperature of 1.094 ± 0.011. In addition to the prompt neutrons
spectrum, a pre−equilibrium component of 0.492 ± 0.025 neutrons per fission was
observed coming from a source with a temperature of 3.63 ± 0.29 MeV. Unfortunately,
the desired compound nucleus components were not resolveable because the
magnitudes of the components were smaller than the magnitudes of the errors on
the data.