U238(e, e′α)cross section in the region of the giant quadrupole resonance

We performed an experiment which was much more sensitive to the ${}_{}{}^{238}{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{U}(e, e^{\prime }\alpha )$ reaction at 13.1 MeV incident electron energy than was a previous experiment which reported surprisingly large cross sections. Our results set an upper limit for the ($e, e^{\prime }\alpha$) cross section of about 16 μb, an order of magnitude smaller than that reported earlier.