"ENERGY + TRANSMUTATION"
"ENERGY+TRANSMUTATION" (International Callaboration, Leading Institute - JINR) - an examination of nuclear reactor characteristics in the near-threshold regime.
The charged particle accelerators with the energies of 1 GeV and more constructed some time ago for fundamental investigations in nuclear physics are frequently used now as the base unit in the neutron intensive pulsed injectors and in various experimental tools for examination of electronuclear methods of energy production as well as for investigations of the used radioactive nuclear component transmutations in the atomic industry. A model of uranium-lead assembly was constructed in JINR in 1999. Currently it is being tested in the proton beam at the synchrotron. Solid-state dacron-based track detectors (STD) are widely used in this experiment owing to some peculiarities of these detectors: high efficiency of fission fragment detection, low intrinsic background and simple treatment technology.
However, visual track counting up for large number of detectors (tens, hundreds) presents rather labour consuming and long-term procedure. This process can be made much easier and the number of processed detectors and their area can be increased if measurements are performed automatically. The results of synchrotron work sessions of 2001-2003 were completely treated making use of the PAVICOM facility. The obtained digital images allow to separate tracks and to determine their concentration. In particular, all the material of the "ENERGY+TRANSMUTATION" experiment from the nuclotron-9 session (JINR, 2003), consisting of exposed mylar film detectors with thickness 100 micron and size 100 x 100 mm*2, was processed. Exposition was carried out at three different proton beam energies: 0.65, 1.0 and 3.7 GeV. Five types of radiators were used: Bi, Ta, Pb, Th, Au.