Revisions and improvements of neutron capture cross sections for EAF-2009 and validation of TALYS calculations

• R.A. Forrest
• J. Kopecky
• A.J. Koning

The European Activation File EAF-2007 forms a comprehensive data library for activation cross sections covering all stable and radioactive targets (including isomers) with half-lives > 6 hours (816 targets in total) with cross sections in the energy range between 10-5 eV and 60 MeV. The underlying capture cross sections file is unique for its completeness, including 1,054 reactions on 812 targets. The summed reactions on 475 targets are supported by experimental data (differential or integral) with the remaining 337 reactions having no experimental support. It is a primary goal of any data library to assign a degree of quality assurance and to justify the expected level of cross section predictability. The tools used for capture cross section calculations or validations are reviewed. The completeness of the neutron capture data with no experimental support forms a perfect object for testing the global performance of the available calculation tools and based on this to assign the cross section uncertainty to the above 337 reactions in a quantitative way. The recent version of EAF (EAF-2007) has been used for a detailed data quality survey and further the recent data source, calculated by the modelling code TALYS-1.0, has been tested and validated. Conclusions are drawn about the predictability power of the TALYS calculations with global parameters and suggestions for improvements for the EAF-2009 release are included.