Development of a neutron sintillator for a compact NRTA system

Ito, Fumiaki*; Lee, J. ; Hironaka, Kota ; Takahashi, Tone; Suzuki, Satoshi*; Hori, Junichi*; Terada, Kazushi*; Koizumi, Mitsuo 

A compact Nuclear Resonance Transmission Analysis (NRTA) system using a Laser Driven Neutron Source (LDNS) has been developed as a part of the development of nuclear non-proliferation technology supported by the MEXT. In NRTA, the neutron energy emitted from a pulsed neutron source is measured using the time-of-flight (TOF) method. LDNS is of interest because of its short pulse width, which is necessary for accurate TOF measurements over short flight distances. In the short-distance TOF measurement, there will be a large gamma-ray background event due to the coincidence of the timing of the arrival of 2.2 MeV gamma-rays due to neutron capture on hydrogen in the moderator and the timing of the arrival of neutrons around the resonance energy. Since the LDNS is still under development, the neutron flux is not sufficient and it is desirable to use a detector with high detection efficiency. For these reasons, we have developed a detector with low efficiency to gamma-rays and high efficiency to neutrons (multilayer neutron detector). As one of the results of this year's experiments, we confirmed that the multilayer neutron detector have low sensitivity to gamma-rays.