Study of Neutron Scattering in the NIF Chamber and Use of Neutron Activation as a Yield Diagnostic(Tu011.5)

One of the planned core neutron diagnostics for NIF will use material activation to aid in determining information about target neutron yields. While this technique was routinely used on Nova and is in use today on Omega, the substantially larger chamber size and neutron yields for NIF raise several new issues for this technique. The effect of neutron scattering, due to the larger amount of entrant equipment inside the chamber, and more importantly, scattering inside the NIF target itself, is shown to be a significant effect. The appropriate location of the counting room to analyze activated samples that is sufficiently protected from neutron fluences is discussed. There are no significant safety issues related to sample handling when using In and Cu for short durations (minutes). We recommend placement and thickness of Cu samples based on neutron yield