On 54Fe neutron cross section importance in iron

The presented paper aims to evaluate the importance of 54Fe XS in iron by means of measuring the reaction rates of the selected reactions on 54Fe and measuring a fast neutron leakage spectra from the iron sphere of 100 cm in diameter by a stilbene scintillation detector with subsequent XS sensitivity analysis. The reactions involved in the study were 54Fe(n,p) and 54Fe(n,α). Measured neutron induced reaction rates in 54Fe are compared with calculated ones in different nuclear data libraries. We show that there are notable discrepancies in 54Fe(n,α) reaction. The results of the leakage spectra differ significantly in various libraries, library ENDF/B-VII.1 in region 3.5-7.0 MeV gives relatively good agreement. CIELO library underestimates the result; however JEFF-3.2 overestimates results., 252Cf with the emission rate of 9.53E8 n/s was used as a neutron source for all experiments involved.