Study of heterogeneous multiplying and non-multiplying media by the neutron pulsed source technique

The pulsed neutron technique consists essentially in sending in the medium to be studied a short neutron pulse and in determining the asymptotic decay constant of the generated population. The variation of the decay constant as a function of the size of the medium allows the medium characteristics to be defined. This technique has been largely developed these last years and has been applied as well to moderator as to multiplying media, in most cases homogeneous ones. We considered of interest of apply this technique to lattices, to see if useful informations could be collected for lattice calculations. We present here a general theoretical study of the problem, and results and interpretation of a series of experiments made on graphite lattices. There is a good agreement for non-multiplying media. In the case of multiplying media, it is shown that the age value used until now in graphite lattices calculations is over-estimated by about 10 per cent