Recovering gamma spectra data and understanding their value for nuclear reactor antineutrinos*

Electron and gamma-ray spectra from the neutron induced fission products of 235U, 239Pu, and 241Pu were measured at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in the 1970s. This data was only published in ORNL reports, while 235U data was available in PDF formats. In this project, we digitized the gamma-ray spectra and the detector response function. This allowed us to compare the gamma-ray spectra and the detector response function with the results of the original calculations using the JEFF-3.3 fission yield sub-library and ENDF/B - VIII.0 decay data sub-library. The gamma spectra are particularly useful to understand possible deficiencies in the aforementioned sub-libraries, and they provide a consistency check with nuclear reactor antineutrino summation calculations due to the energy-wise competing nature of gammas with electrons and electron-antineutrinos.