A new moderated sensor with Li-core thermal neutron detector (left side in the photo) has been constructed and is being tested against the standard He-core sensor (right side) at the Santa Rita Mesquite COSMOS site.
The side-by-side measurements conducted between December 2017 and March 2018 revealed that:
(1) The count rate of the new sensor is more than three times higher than that of the He-based system. Therefore, the uncertainty due to counting statistics is reduced by approximately a factor of 1.7. In the figure below it is manifested by smaller noise in the Li-core count data (top figure) and by lower coefficient of variation (bottom figure).
(2) The dynamic range of the Li-core sensor is almost identical to the standard He-core COSMOS sensor.
Application. The new Li-core moderated sensor is an excellent replacement for the He systems. The price of the Li-core sensor is comparable to that of the standard He-core sensor. Combined with other count-enhancing techniques, it yields an estimated nine-fold increase of the count rate, as compared with the standard COSMOS He-core sensor.
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