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Playing the “bad guy” to enhance next-generation safety
Sometimes, cops and robbers is more than just a kid’s game. At the Department of Energy’s national laboratories, researchers are channeling their inner saboteurs to discover vulnerabilities in next-generation nuclear reactors, making sure that they’re as safe as possible before they’re even constructed.
J. Kohagura, T. Cho, M. Hirata, T. Numakura, R. Minami, H. Watanabe, M. Yoshida, S. Nagashima, H. Ito, K. Yatsu, S. Miyoshi, T. Kondoh, J. Hori, T. Nishitani
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 43 | Number 1 | January 2003 | Pages 271-273
Diagnostics | doi.org/10.13182/FST03-A11963611
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Detailed plasma-physics investigations by the use of x-ray-tomography data supported by the fundamental theoretical studies of x-ray-detector responses enhance the importance of x-ray diagnostics for fusion-plasma analyses. However, degradation in responses of semiconductor x-ray detectors after fusion-produced neutron exposure still remains one of the most serious problems in recent fusion experiments even at this time. For the purpose of investigating and characterizing neutron effects on semiconductor x-ray detectors, detection characteristics of n-type silicon semiconductor detectors which are similar to those utilized for x-ray-tomography detectors in the Joint European Torus (JET) tokamak, are studied by the use of synchrotron radiation from a 2.5-GeV positron storage ring at the Photon Factory. The fusion neutronics source (FNS) of Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute is employed as well-calibrated deuterium-tritium (D-T) neutron source with fluences from 1013 to 1015 neutrons/cm2 onto these semiconductor detectors. Degradation in x-ray responses with increasing neutron fluences has been reported; however, our recent detailed investigations of detector responses show nonlinear dependence as a function of the neutron fluence.