Neutron fan beam source for neutron radiography purpose

The development of the DIANE neutron radiography system included a sealed-tube neutron generator for this purpose and the optimization of the system’s neutron beam quality in terms of divergence and useful thermal neutron yield for each 14-MeV neutron produced. Following this development, the concept of a DIANE fan beam source is herewith introduced. The goal which drives this design is one of economy: by simply increasing the aperture dimension of a conventional DIANE beam in one plane of its collimator axis to a small-angle, fan-shaped output, the useful beam area for neutron radiography would be substantially increased. Thus with the same source, the throughput, or number of objects under examination at any given time, would be augmented significantly. Presented here are the design of this thermal neutron source and the initial Monte Carlo calculations. Taking into account the experience with the conventional DIANE neutron radiography system, these result are discussed and the potential of and interest in such a fan-beam source are explored.