DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF A 3HE REPLACEMENT SAFEGUARDS NEUTRON COUNTER BASED ON BORON-LINED PROPORTIONAL DETECTOR TECHNOLOGY

Year
2012
Author(s)
H.O. Menlove - Los Alamos National Laboratory
D. Henzlova - Los Alamos National Laboratory
Martyn Swinhoe - Los Alamos National Laboratory
C. Rael - Los Alamos National Laboratory
L.G. Evans - Los Alamos National Laboratory
Abstract
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has recently completed a comprehensive experimental evaluation of several commercial boron-lined proportional detector technologies to evaluate their performance for 3He replacement against safeguards relevant parameters. The results from this evaluation provided a broad database for comparison with equivalent 3He performance and for selection of the most viable current commercial design for near term safeguards implementation. The selected technology is now being utilized to design and build a full scale safeguards counter with parameters derived from an existing 3He-based High-Level Neutron Coincidence Counter (HLNCC-II). In this paper the results and conceptual details of the selected technology are presented. The design concept and development of the boron-lined technology based safeguards neutron counter is introduced and discussed.