Performance improvement of neutron flux monitor at KSTAR

Abstract

The evaluation of plasma performance in fusion reactors is carried out by various particle or ion detection systems. Neutron diagnostic systems are used to evaluate different aspects of plasma performance and are very important tools because they can directly detect the neutrons of D-D or D-T fusion reactions. Among them, the stilbene scintillator has good Pulse Shape Discrimination (PSD), a fast response of 10 ns and it can also evaluate neutron energy using an unfolding method. Because of these properties, it was proposed as a neutron flux monitor in the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research magnetic fusion reactor (KSTAR). Under high radiation fields, specially designed electronics are necessary to measure only fast neutron spectra and to reject background gamma rays. In order to increase the data transfer rate for real-time evaluation of plasma performance, we have developed a Flash Analog to Digital Convertor (FADC) with a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) that implements a Digital Charge Comparison (DCC) algorithm. Performance evaluation of stilbene was conducted in a 2011 KSTAR campaign and it showed good results for measuring real-time neutron flux with temporal resolution of 1 ms, and it operated well under high magnetic field conditions.