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150Nd activation decay chain incorrectly handled. #127

@pkienzle

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@pkienzle

The 150Nd activation chain is not handled correctly:

150Nd (n,y) 151Nd (β⁻ 12m) 151Pm (β⁻ 28.4h) 151Sm (β⁻ 90y) 151Eu

The 151Pm halflife is instead treated as if it were 151Nd:

150Nd (n,y) 151Nd (β⁻ 12m) 151Pm (β⁻ 12m) 151Sm (β⁻ 90y) 151Eu

Use the multistage Bateman equation (wikipedia) to check the 151Pm activation levels and compare it to the two-stage calculation shown below.

With 10 g of Nd at natural abundance exposed for 10 h it appears that decay time will be dominated by 147Pm, so even an underestimate of the intermediate 151Pm levels should not be too concerning.


Activation of Nd after 10 hrs at 1.00e+8 n/cm2/s

Estimated activation only. All samples must be evaluated by NIST Health Physics to determine if and how the sample can be removed from the NCNR.

Sample in beam: 10.000 g of Nd
Time to decay below 5.0000e-4 μCi is 11.5 yrs.

Isotope reaction daughter halflife 0 hr 1 hr 24 hr 15 days 7.8 y
Nd-146 act Nd-147t 10.98 d 6.9608e-1 6.9425e-1 6.5350e-1 2.7003e-1 6.1453e-79
Nd-146 b Pm-147 2.6234 y 1.0535e-4 1.2630e-4 5.9308e-4 4.9559e-3 1.0423e-3
Nd-148 act Nd-149t 1.728 h 1.5441e+1 1.0339e+1 1.0179e-3 2.9792e-62 0.0000e+0
Nd-148 b Pm-149 53.08 h 1.4703e+0 1.6162e+0 1.4545e+0 1.8080e-2 0.0000e+0
Nd-150 act Nd-151t 12.44 m 7.2916e+0 2.5758e-1 1.0397e-34 0.0000e+0 0.0000e+0
Nd-150 b Pm-151 28.40 h 1.5371e+0 1.5505e+0 8.8553e-1 2.4306e-4 0.0000e+0
Nd-150 b Sm-151 94.6 y 5.9131e-5 5.9502e-5 5.9515e-5 5.9498e-5 5.6212e-5
Total 2.6437e+1 1.4458e+1 2.9952e+0 2.9337e-1 1.0986e-3

b reaction activity is slightly underestimated; it does not include decay of transients after removal from beam.


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