A new method to determine in situ the transmission of a neutron-guide system at a reactor source

In this paper, a description of a new method to determine the transmission of neutron guides after they are installed in a beam-tube at a reactor source is given. The method is based on activation measurements of gold foils at the entrance of the beam-tube and at the exit of the neutron guides compared to Monte-Carlo calculations. In this method, a quality factor is defined as the ratio between the actual transmission and the theoretical maximum attainable transmission. This method is used to determine the quality of an optimised neutron-guide system developed for beam-tube R2 of the HOR. The HOR is a pool-type nuclear research reactor at the Interfaculty Reactor Institute of the Delft University of Technology. It is shown that the quality factors of the newly installed neutron guides are between 0.49 and 0.63.