Experimental validation of GADRAS's coupled neutron-photon inverse radiation transport solver.
Sandia National Laboratories has developed an inverse radiation transport solver that applies nonlinear regression to coupled neutron-photon deterministic transport models. The inverse solver uses nonlinear regression to fit a radiation transport model to gamma spectrometry and neutron multiplicity counting measurements. The subject of this paper is the experimental validation of that solver. This paper describes a series of experiments conducted with a 4.5 kg sphere of {alpha}-phase, weapons-grade plutonium. The source was measured bare and reflected by high-density polyethylene (HDPE) spherical shells with total thicknesses between 1.27 and 15.24 cm. Neutron and photon emissions from the source were measured using three instruments: a gross neutron counter, a portable neutron multiplicity counter, and a high-resolution gamma spectrometer. These measurements were used as input to the inverse radiation transport solver to evaluate the solver's ability to correctly infer the configuration of the source from its measured radiation signatures.
- Research Organization:
- Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), Albuquerque, NM, and Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC04-94AL85000
- OSTI ID:
- 1024472
- Report Number(s):
- SAND2010-5682C; TRN: US1104746
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Proposed for presentation at the NESA 2010 Conference held August 23-27, 2010 in Albuquerque, NM.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Polyethylene-reflected plutonium metal sphere : subcritical neutron and gamma measurements.
Benchmarks for GADRAS performance validation.