Performance characteristics of a polyethylene collimator with an EJ-426 detector in neutron source localisation

In this paper, characteristics of neutron source localisation using an EJ-426 detector with a polyethylene collimator are presented. The detector is placed inside of the polyethylene collimator, where the collimator has a constant internal diameter and external diameter gradually increases towards the back end. The combined detector-collimator unit was mounted onto an equatorial mount and, data were collected from an ultra-fast mixed-field analyser. Neutron images have been produced to characterise the area investigated in real-time. Radiation images are fundamentally related to the detector efficiency and to the collimator geometry. In order to characterise the neutron source localisation capability of the polyethylene collimator, with an EJ-426 detector, experiments have been carried out using three different neutron sources. Results indicate that the existing design of the polyethylene collimator is suitable for localisation of low energy neutron sources. The measurements were performed in the low-scatter facility of the Neutron Metrology, National Physical Laboratory, Teddington, UK