Investigation of the Energy Correlations of Spallation Neutrons by Monte Carlo Simulations

Abstract

Earlier works have suggested that the energy correlations in a spallation source may influence the neutron noise measurements in an ADS. For the calculation of this effect not only the generally known and used one-particle spectrum is needed but also the so-called two particle spectrum, which describes also the energy correlations. Since measured data are not available for the energy correlation of the neutrons from a single spallation event, the physical models of the MCNPX code have been used to investigate the effect. The calculational model has been successfully validated with measurements of the number distribution of spallation neutrons. The simulated one- and two-particle energy distributions and spectra proved that the energy correlations exist and have an important effect in low multiplicity spallation events and in thin targets. On the other hand, for thick targets this effect appears negligible and the factorization of the two-particle spectrum seems an acceptable approximation. Further investigations are in hand to quantify the actual effect of the energy correlations on the neutron noise measurements.