Ensuring the accuracy of neutron radiation measurements

Abstract

The necessity of spectrometric measurements of neutron fluxes in the nuclear industry for the correct estimation of the radiation density and dose characteristics is justified. It is pointed out that the metrological and methodological support for not only spectrometric, but also radiometric measurements of arbitrary neutron fluxes is imperfect. The concept of a real-time multi-detector neutron spectrometer and the results of the study of its prototype are briefly described. To increase the reliability of the results of neutron measurements, it is proposed to verify a multi-detector neutron spectrometer-dosimeter of real time and existing radiometers-dosimeters of neutron radiation in reference neutron fields with different and reliably known forms of energy spectra. To create reference neutron fields, a neutron test and verification complex was developed and its layout was created. The model was experimentally tested in laboratory tests of a prototype of a multi-detector neutron spectrometer-a real-time dosimeter. It is proposed to train a neural network embedded in a multi-detector neutron spectrometerdosimeter on an extended set of basic spectra, which includes, in addition to the reference field spectra, reliably known spectra of neutron fluxes described in the literature. The procedure for forming a set of model implementations of training and test samples used in training a neural network is presented. It is shown that it is possible to exclude the energy errors of the proposed multi-detector neutron spectrometerdosimeter of real time when measuring neutron fluxes, even when checking in reference fields with a limited variety of spectral forms. The possibility of minimizing the energy errors of existing neutron radiometers-dosimeters during verification in the reference neutron fields of the developed test and verification complex is justified.