Experimental determination of photofission cross-sections of 232Th using electron accelerator

Photofission cross-section of Th-232 was measured using Bremsstrahlung radiation energy 7.4-9.2 MeV with energy step of 0.3 MeV by employing Lexan polycarbonate film as Solid State Nuclear Track Detectors (SSNTD). The photon intensity from the Microtron accelerator facility was estimated to be 10(10) photons/s at a distance of 15 cm from the Bremsstrahlung converter using EGS-4 code (Nelson et al.. 1985). Photofission cross-sections were evaluated using fission fragment angular distribution measurements. The present experimental results were compared with EMPIRE-2.19 (Herman et al., 2005) code prediction of RIPL-1 and RIPL-2 (Mamdouh et al., 2001, 1998) and a new analytical formula (Gupta and Saxena, 2005) for fission barrier. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.