Rossi-alpha measurements of fast plutonium metal assemblies using organic scintillators

Abstract

The reactivity and the k-effective multiplication factor (keff) of a fissionable assembly are quantities of widespread interest. These values can be inferred from Rossi-alpha measurements of the prompt neutron decay constant (or the inverse: α−1). It has been shown that 3He-gas proportional counter-based detection systems are insensitive to α−1 of fast assemblies (much faster than tens of microseconds). Therefore, it is of interest to investigate fast detection systems such as those based on organic scintillation detectors. In this work, an array of 12 cylindrical, 5.08 cm × 5.08 cm diameter trans-stilbene organic scintillators was used to measure five subcritical assemblies. One assembly was a sphere of approximately 4.5 kg of alpha-phase, weapons-grade plutonium (keff=0.773, α−1=11.84ns) known as the BeRP ball encased in a thin stainless-steel clad. The other assemblies used the same encased sphere and 7.62 cm of iron, nickel, copper, or tungsten reflectors (keff=0.884,0.916,0.924,0.939, respectively and α−1=36.60,41.56,49.60,70.32ns, respectively). This work (1) validates Rossi-alpha measurements with organic scintillators by demonstrating good agreement between measurements and simulations; and (2), demonstrates that organic scintillator-based systems are sensitive to α−1 on the order of 10–100 ns.