Kinetics of irradiated liquid hydrogen

We present a model for the kinetics of irradiated liquid hydrogen, as appropriate to a spallation neutron source environment. This model indicates that the ortho-para distribution in an irradiated volume of liquid hydrogen may be significantly different from the thermodynamically equilibrated distribution, resulting in significantly changed neutronic and operational performance for practical liquid hydrogen moderators. Numerical experimentation with the model indicates that neither the pulsed nature of a pulsed source nor the cyclic nature of a flowing liquid hydrogen loop significantly impacts the ortho-para distribution. In developing this model, we have learned that many proposed methods for measuring the ortho-para distribution in an operating moderator system may have potential difficulties, complicating bench-marking efforts. (orig.)