Feynman-α Analysis for a Thermal Subcritical Reactor System Driven by an Unstable 14MeV Neutron Source

Abstract

In a series of Feynman-α correlation measurements for a thermal Accelerator-Driven System (ADS) with 14MeV neutrons at the Kyoto University Critical Assembly (KUCA), an unstable accelerator condition such as a drift of beam current has been frequently observed. Neutron source instability caused by such unavoidable beam-current instability resulted in a divergent variance-to-mean ratio and, consequently, the correlation analysis failed. Nevertheless, we attempted to apply a difference-filtering technique to the correlation analysis to reduce the influence of the above instability. The present attempt resulted in consistent prompt-neutron decay constants with those obtained in a previous pulsed neutron experiment. The application of the filtering is expected to enhance the robustness of Feynman-α analysis against various instabilities of accelerator operation in actual ADS.

KEYWORDS:

• ADS
• KUCA
• Feynman-α
• neutron correlation
• 14 MeV neutron
• accelerator
• instability
• drift
• difference filter
• subcriticality
• monitoring