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The Los Alamos Isotope Production Facility (IPF) creates medical isotopes using a proton beam impinged on a target stack. Spallation neutrons are created in the interaction of the beam with target. The use of these spallation neutrons to produce additional radionuclides has been proposed. However, the energy distribution and magnitude of the flux is not well understood. A modified SAND-II spectral adjustment routine has been used with radioactivation foils to determine the differential neutron fluence for these spallation neutrons during a standard IPF production run.

A critical experiment was performed on the Comet assembly to provide nuclear data in a non-thermal neutron spectrum and to re-establish experimental measurement capabilities relevant to the United ...

A single terbium foil was irradiated with 800 MeV protons to ascertain the potential for production of lanthanide isotopes of interest in medical, astrophysical, and basic science research and to contribute to nuclear data repositories. Isotopes produced in the foil were quantified by gamma spectroscopy. Cross sections for 36 isotopes produced in the irradiation are reported and compared with predictions by the MCNP6 transport code using the CEM03.03, Bertini, and INCL+ABLA event generators. Our results indicate the need to accurately consider fission and fragmentation of relatively light target nuclei like terbium in the modeling of nuclear reactions at 800 MeV. The predictive power of the code was found to be different for each event generator tested but was satisfactory for most of the product yields in the mass region where spallation reactions dominate. However, none of the event generators' results are in complete agreement with measured data., Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures, 1 tables, only pdf, submitted to Nuclear Physics A

Nuclear formation cross sections are reported for 26 radionuclides, measured with 40 to 200 MeV proton irradiations of terbium foils. These data are relevant to the production of medically relevant radionuclides (e.g., 152Tb, 155Tb, 155Eu, and 156Eu) and to ongoing efforts to characterize stellar nucleosynthesis routes passing through long-lived intermediaries (e.g., 153Gd). Computational predictions from the ALICE2011, CEM03.03, Bertini, and INCL+ABLA codes are compared with newly measured data to contribute to the ongoing process of code development, and yields are calculated for selected radionuclides using measured data., Comment: 34 pages, 30 figures, 5 tables, submitted to Phys. Rev. C

Nuclear formation cross sections are reported for 65 nuclides produced from 800-MeV proton irradiation of thorium foils. These data are useful as benchmarks for computational predictions in the ongoing process of theoretical code development and also to the design of spallation-based radioisotope production currently being considered for multiple radiotherapeutic pharmaceutical agents. Measured data are compared with the predictions of three MCNP6 event generators and used to evaluate the potential for 800-MeV productions of radioisotopes of interest for medical radiotherapy. In only a few instances code predictions are discrepant from measured values by more than a factor of two, demonstrating satisfactory predictive power across a large mass range. Similarly, agreement between measurements presented here and those previously reported is good, lending credibility to predictions of target yields and radioimpurities for high-energy accelerator-produced radionuclides., Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables, only pdf, minor revision: version accepted for publication by Phys. Rev. C. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1207.1486