Speaker
Description
$\alpha$-losses is one of the main aspect to sustain a magnetically-confined plasma in a fusion reactor. Monitoring the number of $\alpha$ particles escaping the plasma is then crucial for reactor development and operation. Activation measurement is part of the techniques that can be deployed to do so. Among the materials that could be suitable for the upcoming facilities such as ITER, $^{76}$Ge is a promising candidate, as it can populate the $^{79}$Se isomeric state which has an half-life of 3.9 min and can emit a 95.7 keV $\gamma$-ray upon decay. The main drawback of this solution is that no experimental cross-section nor isomeric ratio is available for this reaction and thick target production yields are available only down to 7.91 MeV. To tackle this issue, we decided to measure both the total ($\alpha$,n) cross section, as well as the partial cross section to the isomeric state, in the 6 to 9 MeV energy range.