  Accurate measurements of photonuclear reaction cross sections are crucial for
a number of applications, including radiation shielding design, absorbed dose
calculations, reactor physics and engineering, nuclear safeguard and
inspection, astrophysics, and nuclear medicine. Primarily motivated by the
study of the production of selected radionuclides with high-energy photon beams
(mainly 225Ac, 47Sc, and 67Cu), we have established a methodology for the
measurement of photonuclear reaction cross sections with the microtron
accelerator available at the Swiss Federal Institute of Metrology (METAS). The
proposed methodology is based on the measurement of the produced activity with
a High Purity Germanium (HPGe) spectrometer and on the knowledge of the photon
fluence spectrum through Monte Carlo simulations. The data analysis is
performed by applying a Bayesian fitting procedure to the experimental data and
by assuming a functional trend of the cross section, in our case a Breit-Wigner
function. We validated the entire methodology by measuring a well-established
photonuclear cross section, namely the 197Au({\gamma},n)196Au reaction. The
results are consistent with those reported in the literature.
