No abstract

One of the priority tasks of nuclear power industry is to increase the reliability and safety of nuclear power plants. In this regard, traditional detectors for measuring the neutron flux in the reactor core are being improved and new ones are developed. This work is dedicated to one of the tasks of creating a compton self-powered neutron detector, namely, the formation of an insulator of magnesium oxide on an emitter of metallic hafnium. The effect of three types of magnesium oxide of different purity and structural state, as well as annealing temperature on the electrical resistance of the insulator between the collector and the emitter of the detector, is studied. The detector prototypes were manufactured by filling with magnesium oxidepowders or by applying liquid-phase mixturesthereof.

The work is devoted to substantiating the use of metallic hafnium as the emitter of the Compton (prompt-response) in-core detector of thermal and resonant neutrons. The main trends in the development of nuclear power engineering, which raise the interest in the use of hafnium, are considered. The known data on the behavior of both Compton and βemission self-powered neutron detectors (SPND) are generalized. The Compton SPND signal formation mechanism for the case of the irradiation by reactor-type fluxes of neutrons and gamma quanta is considered. The paper presents the calculation result of the hafnium burning-out degree for the conditions of WWER and RBMK reactors. The influence of the gamma radiation "sources", which provide the largest contribution to the electrons production in the detector is considered.

No abstract

The properties of a Compton neutron detector with the emitter of metallic Hf were studying in this work. Using the previously calculated the emitter material nuclide composition during reactor irradiation, the dependence of the emitter signal value on the irradiation time was obtained with a step of 1 year for 5 years. It is shown that the composition modification due to nuclear transmutations changes the rate of an electric charge generation in the emitter.