High flux compact neutron generators

Compact high flux neutron generators are developed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The neutron production is based on D-D or D-T reaction. The deuterium or tritium ions are produced from plasma using either a 2 MHz or 13.56 MHz radio frequency (RF) discharge. RF-discharge yields high fraction of atomic species in the beam which enables higher neutron output. In the first tube design, the ion beam is formed using a multiple hole accelerator column. The beam is accelerated to energy of 80 keV by means of a three-electrode extraction system. The ion beam then impinges on a titanium target where either the 2.4 MeV D-D or 14 MeV D-T neutrons are generated. The MCNP computation code has predicted a neutron flux of {approximately}10{sup 11} n/s for the D-D reaction at beam intensity of 1.5 A at 150 kV. The neutron flux measurements of this tube design will be presented. Recently new compact high flux tubes are being developed which can be used for various applications. These tubes also utilize RF-discharge for plasma generation. The design of these tubes and the first measurements will be discussed in this presentation