Neutron activation system using water flow for ITER

Abstract

A neutron activation system with flowing water using the O16(n,p)16N reaction has been designed for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reaction (ITER) neutron yield monitor with temporal resolution, based on the experimental results carried out at the fusion neutronics source (FNS) facility of the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute. On ITER, irradiation ends will be installed in the filler shielding module between the blanket modules at the equatorial ports. The gamma-ray counting stations will be installed on the upstairs of the pit outside the biological shield. BGO (Bi4Ge3O12) scintillation detectors will be employed to measure 6.13 MeV gamma rays emitted from N16. The distance between the irradiation end and the counting station is ∼20 m. The performance of the neutron activation system has been evaluated by using the neutron Monte Carlo code MCNP-4b with the JENDL 3.2 library. The reaction rate of O16(n,p)16N was calculated not only at the irradiation end but also along the transfer line, which showed that the temporal resolution would be less than the ITER requirement of 100 ms including turbulent diffusion effects for the flow velocity of 10 m/s. With a flow velocity of 10 m/s, this system can measure the fusion power from 50 kW to 1 GW of the ITER operation by using two gamma-ray detectors; one detector faces the water pipe directly, and another has a collimator for higher-neutron yield. Also the calculation shows that the reaction rate is relatively insensitive to the change of the plasma position.