A COMPACT NEUTRON SPECTROMETER BASED ON ORGANIC GLASS SCINTILLATORS

Year
2024
Author(s)
David Mercer - Los Alamos National Laboratory
Kurtis D. Bartlett - Los Alamos National Laboratory
Cameron R. Bates - Los Alamos National Laboratory
Darrel T. Beckham - Los Alamos National Laboratory
Tyler C. Borgwardt - Los Alamos National Laboratory
Theresa Cutler - Los Alamos National Laboratory
David K. Hemsing - Los Alamos National Laboratory
Jesus F. Perello Izaguirre - Los Alamos National Laboratory
Mark A. Nelson - Los Alamos National Laboratory
Marc Ruch - Los Alamos National Laboratory
Tony H. Shin - Los Alamos National Laboratory
Karl Smith - Los Alamos National Laboratory
Abstract

Neutron spectroscopy is an under-utilized passive technique that offers information about the source of neutron emissions. It is of particular value for emergency response diagnostics because spectroscopy can distinguish a fission source from (α,n) sources such as AmBe or oxide interactions and can help with a more accurate determination of plutonium mass when combined with classical neutron coincidence/multiplicity counters. To this end, we have developed a compact fast neutron spectrometer based on organic glass scintillators coupled to silicon photomultipliers and a waveform digitizer. The spectrometer has shown excellent performance in discriminating between neutron sources, and when considering only the fast (>2 MeV) portion of the spectrum, the result is reasonably insensitive to intervening scattering or attenuation materials.