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 language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 207-214 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | Nuovo Cimento della Societa Italiana di Fisica C |
Volume | 33 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jan 1 2010 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Astronomy and Astrophysics
- Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)