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2025 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 9–12, 2025
Washington, DC|Washington Hilton
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Latest News
NNSA awards BWXT $1.5B defense fuels contract
The Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration has awarded BWX Technologies a contract valued at $1.5 billion to build a Domestic Uranium Enrichment Centrifuge Experiment (DUECE) pilot plant in Tennessee in support of the administration’s efforts to build out a domestic supply of unobligated enriched uranium for defense-related nuclear fuel.
Gang Li, Ghaouti Bentoumi, Liqian Li
Nuclear Technology | Volume 208 | Number 7 | July 2022 | Pages 1214-1222
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2021.2011672
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Organic liquid scintillators, such as EJ-309, are capable of detecting fast neutrons and discriminating gamma rays through pulse shape. Higher detection efficiency is a common objective for detector designs and research. This paper describes two methods to enhance fast neutron detection by increasing neutron collection and reducing gamma-ray interference. Neutron collection can be increased by using strong scattering material to reflect neutrons toward scintillators. Gamma-ray interference can be reduced by using heavy material to shield gamma rays; such a material could have a minimal impact on neutron detection because neutrons and gamma rays have different interaction cross sections. In this work, both effects were investigated, experimentally and by simulation. Using a graphite reflector with simple geometry, the fast neutron detection was measured to have an increase of 9%, and simulations predicted an approximately 50% increase for optimized geometry. Using a lead shielding of 8-mm thickness, the neutron detection with a Pu source was measured to have a factor of 2 increase. These methods could be useful when cost-effective and highly efficient fast neutron detection is desired.