The pulsing CPSD method for subcritical assemblies with pulsed sources

Abstract

Stochastic neutron transport theory is applied to the derivation of the two-neutron-detectors cross power spectral density for subcritical assemblies when external pulsed sources are used. A general relationship between the two-detector probability generating functions of the kernel and the source is obtained considering the contribution to detectors statistics of both the pulsed source and the intrinsic neutron source. An expansion in alpha-eigenvalues is derived for the final solution, which permits to take into account the effect of higher harmonics in subcritical systems. Further, expressions corresponding to the fundamental mode approximation are compared with recent results from experiments performed under the MUSE-4 European research project.