Experiments on Induced Radioactivity Characteristics of Vanadium Alloy

Induced radioactivity characteristics of vanadium alloys irradiated with 14 MeV neutrons were investigated. Short and long 14 MeV irradiation modes were employed to distinguish the characteristic of radioisotopes according to their half-lives. Radioactivities in several different V-alloy samples were measured by the γ-ray spectrometry. Along with the radionuclides induced in the major constituents, those from impurities were simultaneously identified by the activation analysis. The decay profiles of the induced radioisotopes were compared with the calculation using the comprehensive activation cross section libraries of FENDL/A-2,.0 and JENDL-ACT96. From the ratios of calculation and experiment (C/E), it was proved that the FENDL/A-2.0 and JENDL-ACT96 are adequate to predict the dominant radionuclide in V, Ti, and Cr. However, there was significant underestimation for activation products of impurities of Si, Fe, Ni, Nb and possibly Mo. In particular, the amounts of Nb impurity, which ranges from 70 to 100 ppm, is almost the same as that of the chemical analysis.