SSNTD study of the probable influence of alpha activity on the mass distribution of 252Cf fission fragments

The SSNTD has come a long way in its application for the study of nuclear phenomena. Spontaneous fission of transuranic elements is one such phenomena wherein use of SSNTD offers easy registration of the signature of the fission fragments. The object of the present study is to explore whether any one of the track parameters such as the diameter can be used to estimate the atomic mass ratios of the spontaneous fission fragments. The spontaneous fission data from Cf-252 recorded almost at the end of one and four half-life periods for alpha decay are analysed, taking a plot of the number of tracks versus the track diameter. From these plots it is seen that initially, when significant alpha activity of 252Cf persists, the fission fragments appear to cluster into two predominant groups as indicated by two peaks. The ratio of the diameters at these peak positions appear to be related to the ratio of average mass numbers of the light and heavy groups of fission fragments. However, absence of two peaks for similar plots at the end of about four half-life periods for alpha decay suggests that presumably the presence of alphas influence the mass distribution of the fission fragments. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.