MANTRA: An integral reactor physics experiment to infer actinide capture cross-sections from thorium to californium with accelerator mass spectrometry

The principle of the proposed experiment is to irradiate very pure actinide samples in the Advanced Test Reactor at INL and, after a given time, determine the amount of the different transmutation products. The determination of the nuclide densities before and after neutron irradiation will allow inference of effective neutron capture cross-sections. This approach has been used in the past and the novelty of this experiment is that the atom densities of the different transmutation products will be determined using the Accelerator Mass Spectrometry technique at the ATLAS facility located at ANL. It is currently planned to irradiate the following isotopes: ²³²Th, ²³⁵U, ²³⁶U, ²³⁸U, ²³⁷Np, ²³⁸Pu, ²³⁹Pu, ²⁴⁰Pu, ²⁴¹Pu, ²⁴²Pu, ²⁴¹Am, ²⁴³Am, ²⁴⁴Cm and ²⁴⁸Cm.