Fast neutron spectrum unfolding for nuclear nonproliferation and safeguards applications

S. A. Pozzi, Y. Xu, T. Zak, S. D. Clarke, M. Bourne, M. Flaska, T. J. Downar, P. Peerani, V. Protopopescu

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

We present new neutron spectrum unfolding results obtained from measurements with Cf-252 and plutonium-oxide sources. The precise knowledge of the neutron energy spectrum provides information about the presence or absence of fissile material and about the characteristics of the material. We used a neutron spectrum unfolding technique based on a modification of the least-squares method. The main innovation is the use of a Krylov subspace iteration which performs better on ill-conditioned systems of linear equations than standard direct-solution methods. The proposed technique performed well in the unfolding of measured neutron pulse-height distributions from a Cf-252 neutron source and from plutonium-oxide samples and could be easily implemented in a portable neutron spectroscopy system for nuclear nonproliferation and safeguard applications.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)207-214
Number of pages8
JournalNuovo Cimento della Societa Italiana di Fisica C
Volume33
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 1 2010

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)

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