A 2"×2"BC501A liquid scintillation detector with a gain stabilization system is developed and applied to neutron andγ-ray measurement on the EAST tokamak.Energy calibration of a liquid scintillator using a fast coincidence method is presented and compared with the Monte Carlo simulation.Determination of the proton light output function of the BC501A is presented.Results from dedicated experiments with an Am-Be neutron source,γsource and quasi-monoenergetic neutron beams,and from measurements on EAST tokamak are presented and discussed.
a single crystal chemical vapor deposition (scCVD) diamond detector has been successfully employed for neutron measurements in the EAST (Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak) plasmas. The seCVD diamond detector coated with a 5 μm 6LiF (95% 6Li enriched) layer was placed inside a polyethylene moderator to enhance the detection efficiency. The time-dependent neutron emission from deuteron plasmas during neutral beam injection (NBI) heating was obtained. The measured results are compared with that of fission chamber detectors, which always act as standard neutron flux monitors. The scCVD diamond detector exhibits good reliability, stability and the capability to withstand harsh radiation environments despite its low detection efficiency due to the small active volume.
A compact neutron spectrometer based on the liquid scintillator is presented for neutron energy spectrum measurements at the HL-2A Tokamak. The spectrometer was well characterized and a fast digital pulse shape discrimination software was developed using the charge comparison method. A digitizer data acquisition system with a maximum frequency of 1 MHz can work under an environment with a high count rate at HL-2A Tokamak. Specific radiation and magnetic shielding for the spectrometer were designed for the neutron spectrum measurement at the HL-2A Tokamak. For pulse height spectrum analysis, dedicated numerical simulation utilizing NUBEAM combined with GENESIS was performed to obtain the neutron energy spectrum. Subsequently, the transportation process from the plasma to the detector was evaluated with Monte Carlo calculations. The distorted neutron energy spectrum was folded with the response matrix of the liquid scintillation spectrometer, and good consistency was found between the simulated and measured pulse height spectra. This neutron spectrometer based on a digital acquisition system could be well adopted for the investigation of the auxiliary heating behavior and the fast-ion related phenomenon on different tokamak devices.
The prompt fission neutron spectra for the neutron-induced fission of 233U for low energy neutrons (below 6 MeV) are calculated using nuclear evaporation theory with a semi-empirical method, in which the partition of the total excitation energy between the fission fragments for the nth+233U fission reactions is determined by the available experimental and evaluation data. The calculated prompt fission neutron spectra agree well with the experimental data. The proportions of high-energy neutrons of prompt fission neutron spectrum versus incident neutron energies are investigated with the theoretical spectra, and the results are consistent with the systematics. The semi-empirical method could be a useful tool for the prompt evaluation of fission neutron spectra.
Calculations of prompt fission neutron spectra (PFNS) from the ^235U(n, f) reaction were performed with a semi-empirical method for En = 7.0 and 14.7 MeV neutron energies. The total PFNS were obtained as a superposition of (n,xnf) pre-fission neutron spectra and post-fission spectra of neutrons which were evaporated from fission fragments, and these two kinds of spectra were taken as an expression of the evaporation spectrum. The contributions of (n,xnf) fission neutron spectra on the calculated PFNS were discussed. The results show that emission of one or two neutrons in the (n,nf) or (n,2nf) reactions influences the PFNS shape, and the neutron spectra of the (n,xnf) fission-channel are soft compared with the neutron spectra of the (n,f) fission channel. In addition, analysis of the multiple-chance fission component showed that second-chance fission dominates the PFNS with an incident neutron energy of 14.7 MeV whereas first-chance fission dominates the 7 MeV case.