Comparative Analysis of the Excitation Functions of 238U as Breeder Fuel Using OPTMAN Code.

Abstract

The comparative analysis of the excitation function of Uranium-238 was carried out using a Coupled-Channeled Optical Model code, OPTMAN. The high demand for nuclear reactor fuels has necessitated this research. As one of the major naturally occurring radioisotope of Uranium with lots of fuel prospect, Uranium-238 occur in large quantities (99%). Two steps process away from Uranium-238 on neutron capture can produce fissile materials to be used as reactor fuel. Though, Uranium-238 is not by itself a fissile material. But, it is a breeder reactor fuel. Computations were done for both the Potential Expanded by Derivatives (PED) which account for the Rigid-Rotor Model (RRM) that treat nuclei as rigid vibrating sphere as well as account for nuclear volume conservation and Rotational Model Potentials (RMP) which account for the Soft-Rotator Model (SRM) that treat nuclei as soft rotating spherical deformed shapes. Each of the calculated data was compared with the retrieved data from Evaluated Nuclear Dada File (ENDF) which was found to be in good agreement. The threshold energies in all cases were found to be ≤4 MeV for both PED (Potential Expanded by Derivatives) and RMP (Rotational Model Potentials). It is observed that results from RMP much better agreed with the retrieved data than one obtained from PED.