Since the dawn of the nuclear weapons era, political, military, and scientific leaders around the world have been working to contain the proliferation of Special Nuclear Material and explosively fissile material. This paper describes the construction of a prototype, directional, fast neutron detector, modeled after the Dark Matter Time Projection Chamber. Fast neutrons are emitted by a host of ...

Using a high intensity, femtosecond laser driven neutron source, a high-sensitivity neutron detector was calibrated. This detector is designed for observing fusion neutrons at the Z accelerator in Sandia National Laboratories. Nuclear fusion from laser driven deuterium cluster explosions was used to generate a clean source of nearly monoenergetic 2.45MeV neutrons at a well-defined time. This so...

The Multi-Blade is a Boron-10-based gaseous detector introduced to face the challenge arising in neutron reflectometry at pulsed neutron sources. Neutron reflectometers are the most challenging instruments in terms of instantaneous counting rate and spatial resolution. This detector has been designed to cope with the requirements set for the reflectometers at the upcoming European Spallation So...

Two detectors for energy-resolved fast-neutron imaging in pulsed broad-energy neutron beams are presented. The first one is a neutron-counting detector based on a solid neutron converter coupled to a gaseous electron multiplier (GEM). The second is an integrating imaging technique, based on a scintillator for neutron conversion and an optical imaging system with fast framing capability.

An Accelerator Driven System (ADS) consists in the coupling of an accelerator with a nuclear reactor. Such systems will need neutron detectors working in a wide energy range and insensitive to Xand γ-rays. Micromegas technology has been proposed to achieve this goal. The ability of Micromegas to detect neutrons over a wide energy range has already been demonstrated and this detector is, under c...

Introduction: Results from Mars Odyssey's highenergy neutron spectrometer, and gamma ray spectrometer have shown that there is 15 to 20% ice in the top meter of Martian regolith at latitudes of +/-55 degrees [1,2,3]. This observation has been critical in understanding the nature of patterned ground on Mars [4]. The resolution of the ground ice maps generated from these instruments, however, is ...

How neutrons interact with matter aflkcts the ways in which assays can be pdormed with neutrqs. Neutron interactions with the assay material affkct the interpretation of neutron measurements and limit the amount of fissile material the assay instrument can contain safely. A neutron detector is based on some neutron interaction with the material in the detector. Also, neutron interactions with s...

Solid-state neutron detectors utilize latest advancement in semiconductors for development of efficient and economical neutron detectors. The recent shortage and price increase of He-3 resulted in more incentive to reach maturity of this technology and enable replacement of gas based neutron detectors. Solid state neutron detectors provide important advantages over current neutron detectors suc...

We report on the fabrication and characterization of solid-state thermal neutron detectors with detection areas up to 16 cm that require only a single preamplifier for data acquisition. These detectors consist of a honeycomb-like micro-structured Si diode with boron-10 filled deep holes. A continuous p–n junction formed over the entire surface of the microstructure helps to achieve a low leakag...

BaF, scintillator detectors are now in common use for the measurement of y-rays over a wide energy range because of the relatively high detection efficiency and the fast response which allows subnanosecond timing [1,2]. The BaF, scintillation light consists primarily of two components with decay times of or = 600 ps and TV = 620 ns [2], and the ratio of the intensities associated with each of t...