American Institute of Physics conference proceedings, vol.447: Nuclear Fission and Fission-Product Spectroscopy. Second International Workshop. Seyssins, France, April 1998

The proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nuclear Fission and Fission-Product Spectroscopy summarize the experimental work done recently in the field of nuclear fission and in the investigation of the structure of the fission products. As an important technological aspect of nuclear fission, experimental work on transmutation and disposal of nuclear waste was included in the conference topics. The workshop brought together the specialists in the field to overview the situation and to assess our present understanding of the fission process. It is curious that the experimental situation in low energy fission still improved considerably in the past few years. Comprehensive studies of the fine structure in mass and charge yields and in kinetic energy distributions, systematic investigations of far asymmetric, ternary, and spontaneous fission, and low energy fission experiments carried out at acclerator based facilities brought new essential information on this fascinating physical process. None of the phenomena discovered in recent years anticipated by fission theories, neither the sizable fine structure observed in fission observables, nor the smoothly but rapidly changing behavior of nuclear charge and mass for the regions below Thorium and above Fermium.