Epithermal neutron tomography using compact electron linear accelerator

Abstract

Neutron resonance absorption spectroscopy (N-RAS) with a pulsed neutron source can distinguish the dynamics of individual nuclides having resonance peaks on epithermal neutron region. The analyzed internal information of nuclide presence and its effective temperature can be reconstructed as distributions over the object cross-section using computed tomography (CT). Because some of the resonance absorption cross-sections have very large values, N-RAS could match the small neutron pulsed source by its high sensitivity. In this study, we have constructed a new instrument of N-RAS on a compact electron linac neutron source. Resonance absorption measurements and CT imaging with the instrument have succeeded for some kinds of nuclide.