Neutronic performance of rectangular and cylindrical coupled hydrogen moderators in wide-angle beam extraction of low-energy neutrons

Kai, Tetsuya   ; Harada, Masahide   ; Teshigawara, Makoto   ; Watanabe, Noboru; Kiyanagi, Yoshiaki*; Ikeda, Yujiro

Neutronic study was performed on coupled hydrogen moderators to maximize time-integrated and pulse-peak intensities of slow neutrons when a large number of beams was required. The total increased with the number of beams, although the average decreased due to a reflector-missing by the beam extraction holes in the reflector. At a large beam extraction angle (25 degree), the spatial distribution of the vector-flux of neutrons was undesirable for a rectangular shape moderator. As an alternative we proposed a cylindrical shape one, resulting in a much improved spatial distribution. In addition, neutronic performance was calculated as a function of the diameter, indicating the optimal diameter was about 140 mm. The cylindrical one gave higher pulse-peak intensities with narrower pulse widths without penalty in time-integrated intensities and pulse decay characteristics, providing a more uniform angle-dependence. Some explanations are given for the difference in the pulse characteristics between the two. We decided to adopt the cylindrical one for the Japanese spallation neutron source.