Abstract
The neutron capture cross sections for the Sm-152(n,gamma)Sm-153 and Sm-154(n,gamma)Sm-155, reactions at 0.0536 eV neutron energy were measured using an activation technique based on the TRIGA Mark-II research reactor, relative to the reference reaction Au-197(n,gamma)Au-198. The activity was measured nondestructively using gamma-ray spectroscopy. Our measured values at this neutron energy are the first ones and are compared with 1/v based evaluated cross sections reported in the ENDF/B-VII and JENDL-3.3 libraries. The measured value for the Sm-152(n,gamma)Sm-153 reaction is 0.28% lower than JENDL-3.3 and 0.48% higher than ENDF/B-VII. Our value for the production of Sm-153 is about 3% and 2.3% higher than the evaluated value with ENDF/B-VII and JENDL-3.3 at 0.0536 eV, respectively. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.