A telescope for monitoring fast neutron sources

In the framework of nuclear waste management, highly radiotoxic long-lived fission products and minor actinides are planned to be transmuted in a sub-critical reactor coupled with an intense external neutron source. The latter source would be created by a high-energy proton beam hitting a high atomic number target. Such a new system, termed an accelerator-driven system (ADS), requires on-line and robust reactivity monitoring. The ratio between the beam current delivered by the accelerator and the reactor power level, or core neutron flux, is the basis of one method which could give access to a core reactivity change. In order to test reactivity measurement technique, some experimental programs use 14-MeV neutrons originating from the interaction of a deuteron beam with a tritium target as an external neutron source. In this case, the target tritium consumption over time precludes use of the beam current for reactivity monitoring and the external neutron source intensity must be monitored directly. A range telescope has been developed for this purpose, consisting of the assembly of a hydrogenous neutron converter and three silicon stages where the recoiling protons are detected. In this article, the performances of such a telescope are presented and compared to Monte-Carlo simulations.