The cross-sections for the formation of 89Nb and 90Nb radionuclides in proton induced nuclear reactions on zirconium were measured by using the well known activation method. The natural zirconium (natZr) target and copper (natCu) monitor foils were irradiated by MeV proton beam at the MC50 Cyclotron of the Korea Institute of Radiological and Medical Science (KIRAMS), Korea. The induced gamma activities of the reaction products were measured by a coaxial high purity germanium (HPGe) detector coupled to a PC-based multichannel analyzer. The obtained cross sections for each nuclide are compared with those existing in literature and with the theoretical cross sections calculated by the TALYS - code. | Communications in Physics, Vol. 25, No. 3 (2015), pp. 257-263 DOI: CROSS SECTIONS FOR THE nat Zr(p,xn)89,90 NB REACTIONS INDUCED BY MeV PROTONS PHAM DUC KHUE AND NGUYEN VAN DO Institute of Physics, Vietnamese Academy of Science and Technology LE TUAN ANH College of Sciences, Vietnam National University, Hanoi E-mail: pdkhue@ Received 05 May 2015 Accepted for publication 11 September 2015 Abstract. The cross-sections for the formation of 89 Nb and 90 Nb radionuclides in proton induced nuclear reactions on zirconium were measured by using the well known activation method. The natural zirconium (nat Zr) target and copper (nat Cu) monitor foils were irradiated by MeV proton beam at the MC50 Cyclotron of the Korea Institute of Radiological and Medical Science (KIRAMS), Korea. The induced gamma activities of the reaction products were measured by a coaxial high purity germanium (HPGe) detector coupled to a PC-based multichannel analyzer. The obtained cross sections for each nuclide are compared with those existing in literature and with the theoretical cross sections calculated by the TALYS - code. Keywords: proton induced reaction, cross-section, activation method, HPGe detector, TALYS code, natural zirconium. I. INTRODUCTION Measurements of charged particle induced nuclear reaction cross sections are of increasing importance for various fields of applications such as medical radioisotope production, spallation neutron sources or accelerator-driven system for transmutation of nuclear waste, space radiation effect, radiation damage of materials as well as radiation shielding design and activation analysis. Furthermore, integral cross sections are the most important data for testing and validating nuclear model codes. In this study, we determined the cross sections for the nat Zr(p, xn)89,90 Nb reactions at proton energy of MeV. The zirconium alloys have low neutron-capture cross-section and high mechanical .
