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Inertial Confinement Fusion and Magnetic Confinement Fusion (ICF and MCF) follow different paths toward goals that are largely common. In this paper, the claim is made that progress can be accelerated by learning from each other across the two fields. Examples of successful cross-community knowledge transfer are presented that highlight the gains from working together, specifically in the areas of high-resolution x-ray imaging spectroscopy and neutron spectrometry. Opportunities for near- and mid-term collaboration are identified, including in chemical vapor deposition diamond detector technology, using gamma rays to monitor fusion gain, handling neutron-induced backgrounds, developing radiation hard technology, and collecting fundamental supporting data needed for diagnostic analysis. Fusion research is rapidly moving into the igniting and burning regimes, posing new opportunities and challenges for ICF and MCF diagnostics. This includes new physics to probe, such as alpha heating; increasingly harsher environmental conditions; and (in the slightly longer term) the need for new plant monitoring diagnostics. Substantial overlap is expected in all of these emerging areas, where joint development across the two subfields as well as between public and private researchers can be expected to speed up advancement for all., (© 2024 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).)

The JET neutron camera is a well-established detector system at JET, which has 19 sightlines each equipped with a liquid scintillator. The system measures a 2D profile of the neutron emission from the plasma. A first principle physics method is used to estimate the DD neutron yield that is based on JET neutron camera measurements and is independent of other neutron measurements. This paper details the data reduction techniques, models of the neutron camera, simulations of neutron transport, and detector responses used to this end. The estimate uses a simple parameterized model of the neutron emission profile. The method makes use of the JET neutron camera's upgraded data acquisition system. It also accounts for neutron scattering near the detectors and transmission through the collimator. These components together contribute to 9% of the detected neutron rate above a 0.5 MeVee energy threshold. Despite the simplicity of the neutron emission profile model, the DD neutron yield estimate falls on average within 10% agreement with a corresponding estimate from the JET fission chambers. The method can be improved by considering more advanced neutron emission profiles. It can also be expanded to estimate the DT neutron yield with the same methodology., (© 2023 Author(s). Published under an exclusive license by AIP Publishing.)

When using liquid scintillator detectors to measure the neutron emission spectrum from fusion plasmas, the problem of pile-up distortion can be significant. Because of the large neutron rates encountered in many fusion experiments, some pile-up distortion can remain even after applying traditional pile-up elimination methods, which alters the shape of the measured light-yield spectrum and influences the spectroscopic analysis. Particularly, pile-up events appear as a high-energy tail in the measured light-yield spectrum, which obfuscates the contribution that supra-thermal ions make to the energy spectrum. It is important to understand the behavior of such "fast ions" in fusion plasmas, and it is hence desirable to be able to measure their contribution to the neutron spectrum as accurately as possible. This paper presents a technique for incorporating distortion from undetected pile-up events into the analysis of the light-yield spectrum, hence compensating for pile-up distortion. The spectral contribution from undetected pile-up events is determined using Monte Carlo methods and is included in the spectroscopic study as a pile-up component. The method is applied to data from an NE213 scintillator detector at JET and validated by comparing with results from the time-of-flight spectrometer TOFOR, which is not susceptible to pile-up distortion. Based on the results, we conclude that the suggested analysis method helps counteract the problem of pile-up effects and improves the possibilities for extracting accurate fast-ion information from the light-yield spectrum.

The TOFOR time-of-flight (TOF) neutron spectrometer at the Joint European Torus (JET) is composed of 5 start (S1) and 32 stop (S2) scintillation detectors. Recently, the data acquisition system (DAQ) of TOFOR was upgraded to equip each of the 37 detectors with its own waveform digitizer to allow for correlated time and pulse height analysis of the acquired data. Due to varying cable lengths and different pulse processing pathways in the new DAQ system, the 160 (5 · 32) different TOF pairs of start-stop detectors must be time-aligned to enable the proper construction of a summed TOF spectrum. Given the time (energy) resolution required by the entire spectrometer system to measure different plasma neutron emission components, it is of importance to align the detector pairs to each other with sub-nanosecond precision. Previously, the alignment partially depended on using fusion neutron data from Ohmic heating phases of JET experimental pulses. The dependence on fusion neutron data in the time alignment process is, however, unsatisfactory as it involves data one would wish to include in an independent analysis for physics results. In this work, we describe a method of time-aligning the detector pairs by using gamma rays. Given the known geometry and response of TOFOR to gamma rays, the time alignment of the detector pairs is found by examining gamma events interacting in coincidence in both S1-S1 and S1-S2 detector combinations. Furthermore, a technique for separating neutron and gamma events in the different detector sets is presented. Finally, the time-aligned system is used to analyze neutron data from Ohmic phases for different plasma conditions and to estimate the Ohmic fuel ion temperature.

The Neutron Camera Upgrade (NCU) is a neutron flux monitor consisting of six lines of sight (LoSs) under installation on Mega Ampere Spherical Tokamak (MAST) Upgrade. The NCU is expected to contribute to the study of the confinement of fast ions and on the efficiency of non-inductive current drive in the presence of on-axis and off-axis neutral beam injection by measuring the neutron emissivity profile along the equatorial plane. This paper discusses the NCU main design criteria, the engineering and interfacing issues, and the solutions adopted. In addition, the results from the characterization and performance studies of the neutron detectors using standard γ -rays sources and a 252 Cf source are discussed. The proposed design has a time resolution of 1 ms with a statistical uncertainty of less than 10% for all MAST Upgrade scenarios with a spatial resolution of 10 cm: higher spatial resolution is possible by moving the LoSs in-between plasma discharges. The energy resolution of the neutron detector is better than 10% for a light output of 0.8 MeVee, and the measured pulse shape discrimination is satisfactory.

The present paper describes the findings of the calibration of the neutron yield monitors on the Joint European Torus (JET) performed in 2013 using a 252 Cf source deployed inside the torus by the remote handling system, with particular regard to the calibration of fission chambers which provide the time resolved neutron yield from JET plasmas. The experimental data obtained in toroidal, radial, and vertical scans are presented. These data are first analysed following an analytical approach adopted in the previous neutron calibrations at JET. In this way, a calibration function for the volumetric plasma source is derived which allows us to understand the importance of the different plasma regions and of different spatial profiles of neutron emissivity on fission chamber response. Neutronics analyses have also been performed to calculate the correction factors needed to derive the plasma calibration factors taking into account the different energy spectrum and angular emission distribution of the calibrating (point) 252 Cf source, the discrete positions compared to the plasma volumetric source, and the calibration circumstances. All correction factors are presented and discussed. We discuss also the lessons learnt which are the basis for the on-going 14 MeV neutron calibration at JET and for ITER.

A method of tomographic reconstruction of the neutron emissivity in the poloidal cross section of the Joint European Torus (JET, Culham, UK) tokamak was developed. Due to very limited data set (two projection angles, 19 lines of sight only) provided by the neutron emission profile monitor (KN3 neutron camera), the reconstruction is an ill-posed inverse problem. The aim of this work consists in making a contribution to the development of reliable plasma tomography reconstruction methods that could be routinely used at JET tokamak. The proposed method is based on Phillips-Tikhonov regularization and incorporates a priori knowledge of the shape of normalized neutron emissivity profile. For the purpose of the optimal selection of the regularization parameters, the shape of normalized neutron emissivity profile is approximated by the shape of normalized electron density profile measured by LIDAR or high resolution Thomson scattering JET diagnostics. In contrast with some previously developed methods of ill-posed plasma tomography reconstruction problem, the developed algorithms do not include any post-processing of the obtained solution and the physical constrains on the solution are imposed during the regularization process. The accuracy of the method is at first evaluated by several tests with synthetic data based on various plasma neutron emissivity models (phantoms). Then, the method is applied to the neutron emissivity reconstruction for JET D plasma discharge #85100. It is demonstrated that this method shows good performance and reliability and it can be routinely used for plasma neutron emissivity reconstruction on JET.

This paper presents two different conceptual designs of neutron cameras for Mega Ampere Spherical Tokamak (MAST) Upgrade. The first one consists of two horizontal cameras, one equatorial and one vertically down-shifted by 65 cm. The second design, viewing the plasma in a poloidal section, also consists of two cameras, one radial and the other one with a diagonal view. Design parameters for the different cameras were selected on the basis of neutron transport calculations and on a set of target measurement requirements taking into account the predicted neutron emissivities in the different MAST Upgrade operating scenarios. Based on a comparison of the cameras' profile resolving power, the horizontal cameras are suggested as the best option.

In this work we estimate the fuel ion density profile in deuterium plasmas at JET, using the JET neutron camera, the neutron time-of-flight spectrometer TOFOR, and fusion reactivities modeled by the transport code TRANSP. The framework has been tested using synthetic data, which showed that the density profile could be reconstructed with an average accuracy of the order of 10 %. The method has also been applied to neutron measurements from a neutral beam heated JET discharge, which gave nd/ne ≈ 0.6 ± 0.3 in the plasma core and nd/ne ≈ 0.4 ± 0.3 towards the edge. Correction factors for detector efficiencies, neutron attenuation, and back-scattering are not yet included in the analysis; future work will aim at refining the estimated density.

In this paper, we present the results obtained from the data analysis of neutron spectra measured with a NE213 liquid scintillator at JET. We calculated the neutron response matrix of the instrument combining MCNPX simulations, a generic proton light output function measured with another detector and the fit of data from ohmic pulses. For the analysis, we selected a set of pulses with neutral beam injection heating (NBI) only and we applied a forward fitting procedure of modeled spectral components to extract the fraction of thermal neutron emission. The results showed the same trend of the ones obtained with the dedicated spectrometer TOFOR, even though the values from the NE213 analysis were systematically higher. This discrepancy is probably due to the different lines of sight of the two spectrometers (tangential for the NE213, vertical for TOFOR). The uncertainties on the thermal fraction estimates were from 4 to 7 times higher than the ones from the TOFOR analysis.

The fuel ion ratio nt/nd is an essential parameter for plasma control in fusion reactor relevant applications, since maximum fusion power is attained when equal amounts of tritium (T) and deuterium (D) are present in the plasma, i.e., nt/nd = 1.0. For neutral beam heated plasmas, this parameter can be measured using a single neutron spectrometer, as has been shown for tritium concentrations up to 90%, using data obtained with the MPR (Magnetic Proton Recoil) spectrometer during a DT experimental campaign at the Joint European Torus in 1997. In this paper, we evaluate the demands that a DT spectrometer has to fulfill to be able to determine nt/nd with a relative error below 20%, as is required for such measurements at ITER. The assessment shows that a back-scattering time-of-flight design is a promising concept for spectroscopy of 14 MeV DT emission neutrons.

The Joint European Torus (JET, Culham, UK) is the largest tokamak in the world devoted to nuclear fusion experiments of magnetic confined Deuterium (D)/Deuterium-Tritium (DT) plasmas. Neutrons produced in these plasmas are measured using various types of neutron detectors and spectrometers. Two of these instruments on JET make use of organic liquid scintillator detectors. The neutron emission profile monitor implements 19 liquid scintillation counters to detect the 2.45 MeV neutron emission from D plasmas. A new compact neutron spectrometer is operational at JET since 2010 to measure the neutron energy spectra from both D and DT plasmas. Liquid scintillation detectors are sensitive to both neutron and gamma radiation but give light responses of different decay time such that pulse shape discrimination techniques can be applied to identify the neutron contribution of interest from the data. The most common technique consists of integrating the radiation pulse shapes within different ranges of their rising and/or trailing edges. In this article, a step forward in this type of analysis is presented. The method applies a tomographic analysis of the 3-dimensional neutron and gamma pulse shape and pulse height distribution data obtained from liquid scintillation detectors such that n/γ discrimination can be improved to lower energies and additional information can be gained on neutron contributions to the gamma events and vice versa.

A neutron camera with liquid scintillator detectors is used in MAST to measure the neutron emissivity from D(d,n)(3)He reactions along collimated lines of sight. In this work, the measured recoil proton pulse height spectra generated in the detectors by the incident neutrons is modelled taking into account the energy spectrum of the generated neutrons, their spatial distribution and transport to the detectors as well as the detector's response function. The contribution of scattered neutrons to the pulse height spectrum is also modelled. Good agreement is found between the experimental data and the simulations. Examples are given showing the sensitivity of the recoil proton pulse height spectra to different observation angles with respect the neutral beam injection and the plasma rotation direction.

A prototype of a fully digital data acquisition system based on 1 Gsps 12 bit digitizers for the TOFOR fusion neutron spectrometer at JET is assessed. The prototype system enables the use of geometry-based background discrimination techniques, which are modeled, evaluated, and compared to experimental data. The experimental results are in line with the models and show a significant improvement in signal-to-background ratio in measured time-of-flight spectrum compared to the existing data acquisition system.

In this paper, we present a method to derive n(t)/n(d) using the ratio of the thermonuclear neutron emission to the beam-target neutron emission. We apply it to neutron spectroscopy data from the magnetic proton recoil spectrometer taken during the deuterium tritium experiment at JET. n(t)/n(d)-values obtained using neutron spectroscopy are in qualitative agreement with those from other diagnostics measuring the isotopic composition of the exhaust in the divertor.

The neutron field parameters (fluence and energy distribution) at a specific location outside the JET Torus Hall have been measured by means of super-heated fluid detectors (or "bubble detectors") in combination with an independent, time-of-flight, technique. The bubble detector assemblies were placed at the end of a vertical line of sight at about 16 m from the tokamak mid plane. Spatial distributions of the neutron fluence along the radial and toroidal directions have been obtained using two-dimensional arrays of bubble detectors. Using a set of three bubble detector spectrometers the neutron energy distribution was determined over a broad energy range, from about 10 keV to above 10 MeV, with an energy resolution of about 30% at 2.5 MeV. The very broad energy response allowed for the identification of energy features far from the main fusion component (around 2.45 MeV for deuterium discharges).

To overcome the challenge of measuring the fuel ion ratio in the core (ρ<0.3) of ITER, a coordinated effort aiming at developing diagnostic techniques has been initiated. The investigated techniques are novel uses or further development of existing methods such as charge exchange recombination spectrometry, neutron spectrometry, and collective Thomson scattering. An overview of the work on the three diagnostic techniques is presented.

The determination of the fuel ion ratio n(t)/n(d) in ITER is required at a precision of 20%, time resolution of 100 ms, spatial resolution of a/10, and over a range of 0.016 keV and for n(T)/n(D)<0.6. A crucial issue is the signal-to-background situation in the measurement of the weak 2.5 MeV emission from DD reactions in the presence of a background of scattered 14 MeV DT neutrons. Important experimental input and corroboration for this assessment are presented from the time-of-flight neutron spectrometer at JET where the presence of a strong component of backscattered neutrons is observed. Neutron emission components on ITER due to beam-thermal and tritium-tritium reactions can further enhance the prospects for NES.

A prototype neutron camera has been developed and installed at MAST as part of a feasibility study for a multichord neutron camera system with the aim to measure the spatial and time resolved 2.45 MeV neutron emissivity profile. Liquid scintillators coupled to a fast digitizer are used for neutron/gamma ray digital pulse shape discrimination. The preliminary results obtained clearly show the capability of this diagnostic to measure neutron emissivity profiles with sufficient time resolution to study the effect of fast ion loss and redistribution due to magnetohydrodynamic activity. A minimum time resolution of 2 ms has been achieved with a modest 1.5 MW of neutral beam injection heating with a measured neutron count rate of a few 100 kHz.

Recent experiments at JET aimed at producing 4He ions in the MeV range through third harmonic ion cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH) acceleration of 4He beams in a 4He dominated plasma. MeV range D was also present through parasitic ICRH absorption on residual D. In this contribution, we analyze TOFOR neutron spectrometer data from these experiments. A consistent description of the data is obtained with d(d,n)3He and 9Be(α,n)12C neutron components calculated using Stix distributions for the fast D and 4He, taking finite Larmor radius effects into account and with a ICRH power partition of P(D)(RF) = 0.01×P(4He)(RF), in agreement with TOMCAT simulations.

In a fusion reactor with high energy gain, the fusion power will be mainly thermonuclear (THN). Measurements of the THN neutron rate are a good performance indicator of a fusion plasma, requiring neutron emission spectroscopy (NES) measurements to distinguish thermal and nonthermal contributions. We report here on recent NES results from JET high-performance plasmas with high fractions (about 65%) of THN emission. The analysis is made with a framework for analyzing NES data, taking into account THN reactions and beam-target reactions. The results are used to extrapolate to the equivalent DT rates. Finally, we discuss the applicability of using NES in the deuterium phase of ITER, both for the extrapolations to ITER’s future DT performance as well as for the measurements of confined energetic ions.

Burning plasma experiments such as ITER and DEMO require diagnostics capable of withstanding the harsh environment generated by the intense neutron flux and to maintain stable operating conditions for times longer than present day systems. For these reasons, advanced control and monitoring (CM) systems will be necessary for the reliable operation of diagnostics. This paper describes the CM system of the upgraded magnetic proton recoil neutron spectrometer installed at the Joint European Torus focusing in particular on a technique for the stabilization of the gain of the photomultipliers coupled to the neutron detectors. The results presented here show that this technique provides good results over long time scales. The technique is of general interest for all diagnostics that employ scintillators coupled to photomultiplier tubes.

A method to generate modeled neutron spectra from bulk and fast ion distributions simulated by TRANSP has been developed. In this paper, modeled data generated from fuel ion distributions modeled with TRANSP is compared to measured data from two neutron spectrometers with different lines of sight; TOFOR with a radial one and the MPRu with a tangential one. The information obtained from the analysis of the measured neutron spectra such as the relative intensity of the emission from different ion populations places additional constraints on the simulation and can be used to adjust the parameters of the simulation.

The effect of ion cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH) on (3He)D plasmas at JET was studied with the time of flight optimized rate (TOFOR) spectrometer dedicated to 2.5 MeV dd neutron measurements. In internal transport barrier (ITB) plasma experiments with large 3He concentrations (X(3He)>15%) an increase in neutron yield was observed after the ITB disappeared but with the auxiliary neutral beam injection and ICRH power still applied. The analysis of the TOFOR data revealed the formation of a high energy (fast) D population in this regime. The results were compared to other mode conversion experiments with similar X(3He) but slightly different heating conditions. In this study we report on the high energy neutron tails originating from the fast D ions and their correlation with X(3He) and discuss the light it can shed on ICRH-plasma power coupling mechanisms.

The line integrated line emission measured by neutron spectrometers at JET along sight lines in the vertical and horizontal planes has been simulated in Monte Carlo calculations to determine the relationship between the measured (effective) ion temperature (T(eff)) relative to the peak value of the profile (T(0)). The general sight line dependence of (T(eff)) was expressed analytically for circular plasmas which was used to explain the simulated results for the actual JET sight lines. The analytical model with parametrization of sight lines and plasma profiles is described and the results are used to discuss dual sight line measurements that can be tested at JET and its forward implications for study burning (nearly thermal) plasmas of ITER.

A determination of fast ion population parameters such as intensity and kinetic temperature is important for fusion reactors. This becomes more challenging with finer time resolution of the measurements, since the limited data in each time slice cause increasing statistical variations in the data. This paper describes a framework using Bayesian-regularized neural networks (NNs) designed for such a task. The method is applied to the TOFOR 2.5 MeV fusion neutron spectrometer at JET. NN training data are generated by random sampling of variables in neutron spectroscopy models. Ranges and probability distributions of the parameters are chosen to match the experimental data. Results have shown good performance both on synthetic and experimental data. The latter was assessed by statistical considerations and by examining the robustness and time consistency of the results. The regularization of the training algorithm allowed for higher time resolutions than simple forward methods. The fast execution time makes this approach suitable for real-time analysis with a time resolution limit in the microsecond time scale.