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2-D Evaluation of Bred Tritium Using Neutron Imaging Plate

MetadataDetails
Publication Date2019-12-09
JournalIEEE Transactions on Plasma Science
AuthorsKeisuke Mukai, Yasuyuki Ogino, Juro Yagi, Satoshi Konishi
InstitutionsKyoto University
Citations8

Tritium breeding performance of a fusion blanket is a key parameter for the self-sufficient fueling of a fusion reactor, and thus designed to validate the performance of a neutronics experiment. Measuring the 2-D distribution of bred tritium is challenging via conventional methods such as β-ray counting from an irradiated lithium sample using a liquid scintillation counter (LSC) and a single-crystal diamond detector with a thin <sup xmlns:mml=“http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML” xmlns:xlink=“http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink”&gt;6&lt;/sup> LiF film, because they are point detectors which require many measurements. In this article, 2-D distribution of the low quantity produced tritium was evaluated with a neutron imaging plate (NIP) with a Gd convertor by estimating the loss of neutrons via a capture reaction by Li. Deuterium-deuterium (DD) fusion neutrons were generated using a compact fusion device at an average neutron production rate of 1.5 × 10 <sup xmlns:mml=“http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML” xmlns:xlink=“http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink”&gt;5&lt;/sup> n/s by applying high voltages. A neutron image with “shadows” projected by thermal neutron capture reactions of <sup xmlns:mml=“http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML” xmlns:xlink=“http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink”&gt;6&lt;/sup> Li(n,α) and <sup xmlns:mml=“http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML” xmlns:xlink=“http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink”&gt;10&lt;/sup> B(n,α) was successfully obtained. The experimentally evaluated values were confirmed to be consistent with the total number of capture reactions calculated using a neutron transport code. The results suggest that the approach could be a facile method for the 2-D evaluation of bred tritium.

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