The fabrication of gratings including metal deposition processes for highly neutron absorbing lines is a critical issue to achieve a good visibility of the grating-based phase imaging system. The source grating for a neutron Talbot-Lau interferometer is an array of Gadolinium (Gd) structures that are generally made by sputtering, photo-lithography, and chemical wet etching. However, it is very challenging to fabricate a Gd structure with sufficient neutron attenuation of approximately more than 20 μm using a conventional metal deposition method because of the slow Gd deposition rate, film stress, high material cost, and so on. In this article, we fabricated the source gratings for neutron Talbot-Lau interferometers by filling the silicon structure with Gadox particles. The new fabrication method allowed us a very stable and efficient way to achieve a much higher Gadox filled structure than a Gd film structure, and is even more suitable for thermal polychromatic neutrons, which are more difficult to stop than cold neutrons. The newly fabricated source gratings were tested at the polychromatic thermal neutron grating interferometer system of HANARO at the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, and the visibilities and images from the neutron phase imaging system with the new source gratings were compared with those fabricated by a Gd deposition method.

The small angle neutron scattering (SANS) technique was used to determine the nano-sized precipitates in interstitial free (IF) and low-carbon (LC) steels with a hot-rolling temperature. The real-space direct model fitting method was applied to quantitatively analyze the SANS data. The magnetic and chemical properties of precipitates in the samples were also investigated by separation and comparison of nuclear and magnetic SANS scattering data. The size distribution of precipitates in the IF steel is in good agreement with the microstructure observation using transmission electron microscopy. The results revealed that the IF steel had two types of non-magnetic precipitates, Ti 4 C 2 S 2 and TiC, with the average size of about 30 nm in diameter and little difference in chemical composition. In case of commercial LC steel, the fine and large precipitates are identified as MnS and Fe 3 C, respectively. The average size of spherical MnS precipitates was about 4.8 nm in radius and the distribution is isotropic. It is likely that the LC steels have almost the same composition and a similar size as precipitates such as MnS and Fe 3 C with different fin-

No abstract

The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute has successfully completed the commissioning tests, including the long-term operational performance test for the HANARO, a newly in-service multipurpose research reactor in Korea. This paper presents the design characteristics of the HANARO and a brief description on the startup tests carried out at zero and low power during its commissioning. The reactor is now at the shutdown state for the periodic surveillance after cycle 1 operation and is waiting for the additional fuel loading to configure the cycle 2 core. The reactor is expected to undergo five more cycles of operation in this year. The important physics tests will be conducted at the beginning and at the end of each cycle.

No abstract