TANGRA-Setup for the Investigation of Nuclear Fission Induced by 14.1 MeV Neutrons

Abstract The new experimental setup TANGRA (Tagged Neutrons & Gamma Rays), for the investigation of neutron induced nuclear reactions, e.g. (n,xn’), (n,xn’γ), (n,γ), (n,f), on a number of important isotopes for nuclear science and engineering ( 235,238 U, 237 Np, 239 Pu, 244,245,248 Cm) is under construction and being tested at the Frank Laboratory of Neutron Physics (FLNP) of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna. The TANGRA setup consists of: a portable neutron generator ING-27, with a 64-pixel Si charge-particle detector incorporated into its vacuum chamber for registering of α-particles formed in the T(d, n) 4 He reaction, as a source of 14.1 MeV steady-state neutrons radiation with an intensity of ∼5x107n/s; a combined iron (Fe), borated polyethylene (BPE) and lead (Pb) compact shielding-collimator; a reconfigurable multi-detector (neutron plus gamma ray detecting system); a fast computer with 2 (x16 channels) PCI-E 100 MHz ADC cards for data acquisition and hard disk storage; Linux ROOT data acquisition, visualization and analysis software. The signals from the α-particle detector are used to ‘tag’ the neutrons with the coincident α-particles. Counting the coincidences between the α-particle and the reaction-product detectors in a 20ns time-interval improves the effect/background-ratio by a factor of ∼200 as well as the accuracy in the neutron flux determination, which decreases noticeably the overall experimental data uncertainty.