CHARACTERIZATION OF A BC501A DETECTOR FOR MONITORING 14 MeV NEUTRONS FROM A DEUTERIUM-TRITIUM SOURCE

摘要

Transmutation of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) is a key technology for a sustainable nuclear energy, being the ADS one of the explored concepts to reduce its radiotoxicity and volume. A key parameter in the future ADS facilities will be the monitoring of the reactivity, being the accelerator intensity, the neutron source intensity and the power the relevant parameters to be determined on-line. Nowadays, most of the experiments carried out to study the kinetic properties of ADS and to develop ADS control systems use deuterium-tritium reactions to generate intense neutron sources. The necessary experimental determination of the neutron source intensity relies in measuring neutrons with a different energy spectrum than those originated by fission within the reactor. This method will be applied in future ADS facilities for neutrons with energies > 50 MeV, and can be used in reactors driven by a deuterium-tritium source measuring neutrons with energies > 7 MeV. We have used a BC501A organic scintillator to measure high-energy neutrons coming from the GENEPI-2 (CNRS-Grenoble) neutron source. The source intensity was demonstrated to follow a linear dependence on the deuterium beam current for intensities up to ~10 10 deuterium/pulse.