THE B10(α,n)N13 AND B10(t,2n)C11 REACTIONS IN A NUCLEAR REACTOR

Abstract

Ten-minute N13 and 20-minute C11 have been produced in the NRX reactor by the following reactions:[Formula: see text]The alpha particles and the tritons were generated by thermal neutron capture in B10 and Li6, respectively. These reactions offer a simple and rapid method of obtaining C11 and N13 in fairly high specific activities. It is estimated that activities of the order of 100 μc of N13 and 1 mc of C11 can be produced in a thermal neutron flux of 6.5 × 1013 n/cm2 sec. Incidental to these studies are some observations on the chemical behavior of N13 and C11 recoil atoms in a few boron compounds.