Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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Development of neutron time-of-flight measurement system for 1.7-MV tandem proton accelerator with lithium target

  • Lim, Soobin (Department of Nuclear Engineering, Seoul National University) ;
  • Kim, Donghwan (Department of Nuclear Engineering, Seoul National University) ;
  • Kang, Jin-Goo (Department of Nuclear Engineering, Seoul National University) ;
  • Dang, Jeong-Jeung (Korea Multi-Purpose Accelerator Complex, KAERI) ;
  • Lee, Pilsoo (Korea Multi-Purpose Accelerator Complex, KAERI) ;
  • Kim, Geehyun (Department of Nuclear Engineering, Seoul National University) ;
  • Chung, Kyoung-Jae (Department of Nuclear Engineering, Seoul National University) ;
  • Hwang, Y.S. (Department of Nuclear Engineering, Seoul National University)
  • Received : 2021.03.08
  • Accepted : 2021.03.31
  • Published : 2022.02.25
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Abstract

In this study, we developed a neutron time-of-flight (nTOF) measurement system for a 1.7-MV tandem proton accelerator with a target covered with 300-nm-thick lithium (Li) layer. With implementation of beam chopping module after its ion source, the accelerator is configured to operate in pulsed-beam mode with a pulse width <50 ns at 20-kHz repetition rate. This enables the gamma flash-type nTOF measurement system to identify the neutron generated with 3-MeV proton beam energy. The nTOF system consists of a 30" cylindrical NaI(Tl) and four stilbene scintillation detectors. The NaI(Tl) scintillator is placed 50 cm from the Li target to measure the time of beam irradiation on the target, and the stilbene detectors are placed 2 and 2.4 m away to measure nTOF at each location. The nTOF system successfully measured the generated neutron energy at irradiated proton energies of 2.6 and 3.0 MeV with an average energy resolution of 15%.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea(NRF) grant funded by the Korea government(MSIT) (No. 2018M2A2B3A02072240, and No. 2020M2D1A1064206).

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