Experimental determination of neutron capture cross sections at a rare thermal energy using the BAEC TRIGA reactor

Since the installation of the Triple Axis Spectrometer (TAS) in the radial piercing beam port of the 3 MW TRIGA Mark-II research reactor of Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission (BAEC), it has been utilized for material research using neutron scattering technique. Recently, we have opened a new arena by utilizing the same beam port for determination of neutron capture cross sections at a rare energy in thermal region using the neutron activation analysis (NAA) technique. Three experiments have successfully been carried out in determining the neutron capture cross section for the targets W, Ga and Sm using the reactions 186W(n,γ)187W, 71Ga(n,γ)72Ga, 151Sm(n,γ)152Sm and 153Sm(n,γ)154Sm at the thermal energy of 0.0536 eV. Recent extensive literature review insisted us to claim that there are no experimental neutron capture crosssection data available at our investigated energy. So far, we carried out experiments at 0.0536 eV neutrons for cross section measurements for the first time. Our experimental results were critically compared with the evaluated data quoted in JENDL3.3 and ENDF/BVII. The results at this particular thermal energy will be useful to observe energy dependence of neutron capture cross sections. (author)