Neutron scatter camera
AssigneeSandia Corporation
InventorsNicholas Mascarenhas, Peter Marleau, James S. Brennan, Kevin D. Krenz
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An instrument that will directly image the fast fission neutrons from a special nuclear material source has been described. This instrument can improve the signal to background compared to non imaging neutron detection techniques by a factor given by ratio of the angular resolution window to 4π. In addition to being a neutron imager, this instrument will also be an excellent neutron spectrometer, and will be able to differentiate between different types of neutron sources (e.g. fission, alpha-n, cosmic ray, and D-D or D-T fusion). Moreover, the instrument is able to pinpoint the source location.
Claims14
A neutron scatter camera, comprising:
- a liquid scintillator cell having a front and a rear face, and a photomultiplier tube (PMT) coupled to the rear face of the liquid scintillator cell to provide a detector assembly;
- a first plurality of detector assemblies disposed in a first group and mounted onto a first plurality of struts, the first plurality of struts interconnected to form a first rigid frame;
- a second plurality of detector assemblies disposed in a second group and mounted onto a second plurality of struts, the second plurality of struts interconnected to form a second rigid frame, wherein the first and second groups are held at a fixed separation distance relative to each other as a rigid structure;
- and
- a pulse discrimination module in electrical communication with each of the first and second plurality of detector assemblies.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.