The thin-foil magnetic proton recoil neutron spectrometer MPRu at JET

• Neutrons are produced in fusion energy experiments with both deuterium (D) and deuterium–tritium (DT) plasmas. Neutron spectroscopy is a valuable tool in the study of the underlying fuel ion populations. The magnetic proton recoil neutron spectrometer, originally installed at JET in 1996 for 14-MeV neutron measurements, has been upgraded, with the main aim of improving its signal-to-background ratio (S/B), making measurements of the 2.5-MeV neutron emission in D plasmas possible. The upgrade includes a new focal-plane detector, based on the phoswich technique and consequently less sensitive to background, and a new custom-designed digital data acquisition system based on transient recorder cards. Results from JET show that the upgraded MPRu can measure 2.5-MeV neutrons with S/B=5, an improvement by a factor of 50 compared with the original MPR. S/B of 2.8×104 in future DT experiments is estimated. The performance of the MPRu is exemplified with results from recent D plasma operations at JET, concerning both measurements with Ohmic, ion cyclotron resonance (ICRH) and neutral beam injection (NBI) plasma heating, as well as measurements of tritium burn-up neutrons. The upgraded instrument allows for 2.5-MeV neutron emission and deuterium ion temperature measurements in plasmas with low levels of tritium, a feature necessary for the ITER experiment.

Nyckelord

Neutron

Spectrometer

14 MeV neutrons

2.5 MeV neutrons

MPR

MPRu

Fusion

Diagnostic

TECHNOLOGY

TEKNIKVETENSKAP

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