Thermal neutron capture cross sections for the 152Sm(n,γ)153Sm and 154Sm(n,γ)155Sm reactions at 0.0536 eV energy

The neutron capture cross sections for the 152Sm(n,γ)153Sm and 154Sm(n,γ)155Sm reactions at 0.0536 eV neutron energy were measured using an activation technique based on the TRIGA Mark-II research reactor, relative to the reference reaction 197Au(n,γ)198Au. The activity was measured nondestructively using gamma-ray spectroscopy. Our measured values at this neutron energy are the first ones and are compared with 1/v based evaluated cross sections reported in the ENDF/B-VII and JENDL-3.3 libraries. The measured value for the 152Sm(n,γ)153Sm reaction is 0.28% lower than JENDL-3.3 and 0.48% higher than ENDF/B-VII. Our value for the production of 155Sm is about 3% and 2.3% higher than the evaluated value with ENDF/B-VII and JENDL-3.3 at 0.0536 eV, respectively.