Evaluation of neutron nuclear data on Ba isotopes

Iwamoto, Nobuyuki  ; Yanagida, Shotaro*

Evaluation of neutron nuclear data on Ba isotopes has not been performed since the early 1990s. Natural barium has seven isotopes and the most abundant one is Ba (71.698%). In viewpoint of nuclear medicine -ray with 250 keV is emitted from the decay of Xe and is likely to be used to nuclear imaging. Four radioisotopes with half-life longer than 30 days are generated by reactions with neutrons with energies smaller than 20 MeV. It is important to revise nuclear data on Ba isotopes using the latest experimental data in order to evaluate their radioactivities with good accuracy. In this study I carried out the evaluation of cross sections up to incident neutron energy of 20 MeV. As a result, the present result improves the underestimation of Ba()Xe reaction cross section. -ray production cross sections which were not included in JENDL-4.0, are calculated and are in good agreement with experimental data.