Short history of fission physics research at the University of Illinois

The fission physics research efforts can be roughly divided into two broad categories: those dealing with the beta decay of the fission products (or decay heat studies) and those dealing with fission yields. Starting with an experiment which could measure only high energy betas, work in the first category progressed to the point where the decay heating behavior is fairly definitively known. This group of experiments had one major parameter to be measured, so the data were collected using a multichannel analyzer (MCA) and associated coincidence circuitry. The second group of experiments, the fission-yield experiments, on the other hand, were mostly (and are) multi-parameter and thus must use more complicated data acquisition equipment which has been the source of many problems and the object of much effort over the years. Other major efforts in the second category have been in increasing energy (and thus mass) resolution, in measuring the characteristic x-rays of the fission fragments that emit them, and in identifying nuclides by the energy-loss method