NEUTRON MEASUREMENT TECHNIQUES FOR TOKAMAK PLASMAS

The present article reviews the neutron measurement techniques that are currently being applied to the study of tokamak plasmas. The range of neutron energies of primary interest is limited to narrow bands around 2.5 and 14 MeV, and the variety of measurements that can be made for plasma diagnostic purposes is also restricted. To characterize the plasma as a neutron source, it is necessary only to measure the total neutron emission, the relative neutron emissivity as a function of position throughout the plasma, and the energy spectra of the emitted neutrons. In principle, such measurements might be expected to be relatively easy. That this is not the case is, in part, attributable to practical problems of accessibility to a harsh environment but is mostly a consequence of the time-scale on which the measurements have to be made and of the wide range of neutron emission intensities that have to be covered; for tokamak studies, the time-scale is of the order of 1 to 100 ms and the neutron intensity ranges from 10(12) to 10(19) s-1.