Neutron energy spectrum in a reactor exit channel with a single surface barrier sensor using GEANT4

Neutron spectrum measurements at a radial beam port of the NUR research reactor using a Bonner spheres spectrometer

This paper describes the measurement campaign held around the neutron radiography (NR) facility of the Algerian 1MW NUR research reactor. The main objective of this work is to characterize accurately the neutron beam provided at one of the radial channels of the NUR research reactor taking benefit of the acquired CRNA Bonner spheres spectrometer (BSS). The specific objective was to improve the image quality of the NR facility. The spectrometric system in use is based on a central spherical (3)He thermal neutron proportional counter combined with high density polyethylene spheres of different diameters ranging from 3 to 12in. This counting system has good gamma ray discrimination and is able to cover an energy range from thermal to 20MeV. The measurements were performed at the sample distance of 0.6m from the beam port and at a height of 1.2m from the facility floor. During the BSS measurements, the reactor was operating at low power (100W) to avoid large dead times, pulse pileup and high level radiation exposures, in particular, during spheres handling. Thereafter, the neutron spectrum at the sample position was unfolded by means of GRAVEL and MAXED computer codes. The thermal, epithermal and fast neutron fluxes, the total neutron flux, the mean energy and the Cadmium ratio (RCd) were provided. A sensitivity analysis was performed taking into account various defaults spectra and ultimately a different response functions in the unfolding procedure. Overall, from the obtained results it reveals, unexpectedly, that the measured neutron spectrum at the sample position of the neutron radiography of the NUR reactor is being harder with a predominance of fast neutrons (>100keV) by about 60%. Finally, those results were compared to previous and more recent measurements obtained by activation foils detectors. The agreement was fairly good highlighting thereby the consistency of our findings.