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Results (English) 1:

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Although it quite far removed from the realm of the student laboratory, we want to mention a somewhat unusualnovel research effort in reactor technology. The MYRRHA collaboration is developing a reactor with a sub-critical core.The fission in this reactor is initiated by injecting additional neutrons to achieve criticality. The neutrons are produced ina spallation reaction by bombarding heavy elements with a proton beam from an accelerator. The neutron and energyyield of this process are simply controlled by the accelerator current. On the website of the collaboration, one can find a description of the principle as well as a list of more technical references. The authors conducting that research point out its potential use in fissioning away long lived nuclear waste such as plutonium, as well as potential future applications in production of isotopes for medical use. Clearly the MYRRHA project is an advanced research effort, very far removed from the realm of lab courses. However, the physical principle of our experiment is very similar. Instead ofusing an accelerator we produce the neutrons by employing charged particles from a radioactive source, at a muchsmaller yield. The source used in this work contains a mixture of americium-241 and beryllium-9, the americium acting as a source of a particles and the beryllium as a neutron emitter upon absorption of the a particles