Feynman-α technique for measurement of detector dead time using a 30 kW tank-in-pool research reactor

Reactor noise analysis was carried out for Ghana Research Reactor-1 GHARR-1, a tank-in-pool type reactor using the Feynman-α technique (variance-to-mean method). Measurements made at different detector positions and under subcritical conditions showed that the technique could not be used to determine the prompt decay constant for the reactor which is Be reflected with photo-neutron background. However, for very low dwell times the technique was used to measure the dead time of the detector which compares favourably with the value obtained using the α-conventional method.