Systematic analysis of the neutron-induced reaction cross sections for natMo isotopes within 10-20 MeV

The production cross sections for the medical isotope Mo-99 were measured using the Mo-100(n, 2n) reaction at average neutron energies of 10.95 +/- 0.45, 13.97 +/- 0.68, 16.99 +/- 0.53, and 20.00 +/- 0.58 MeV using offline gamma-ray spectroscopy. The neutron beam was generated using the Li-nat(p, n) reaction at the 14UD BARC-TIFR Pelletron facility, Mumbai, India. The uncertainties in the measured data were calculated using covariance analysis. The experimental results were compared with the existing data libraries ENDF/B-VII.1, JENDL-4.0, JEFF-3.2, and CENDL-3.1. The present results were also reproduced and compared with the theoretical nuclear model codes TALYs-1.9 and ALICE-2017 using different input descriptions. A modified set of parameters were also used in TALYs-1.9 to fit the existing data more accurately. The present findings show a good agreement with the theoretical predictions and with the existing experimental results from the different data libraries. In addition to this, a comparative study have also been performed between the literature data of (n, p), (n, 2n), and (n, a) reaction cross sections at 14.5 MeV using various systematic formulas. The outcomes of the present work are important for the advancement of medical accelerators, dosimetry, and fast reactor systems.