The Fast Loading User Facility for Fission Yields (FLUFFY) is a pneumatic system that has been constructed at LBNL's 88-inch cyclotron. This device allows the rapid transport (˜0.7 s) of a capsule containing target samples between a neutron beam and an HPGe clover array. The rapidity of this transport allows for the measurement of short-lived fission product yields (half-life < 1 s) when an actinide sample is loaded in the capsule.
FLUFFY was constructed by Eric Matthews and Jon Morrell and was commissioned in April 2019. Further improvements to the system were implemented in September 2019. The first data production run for FLUFFY was run in July 2020. During this experiment 238U and 235U samples were irradiation with duty cycles of 1 s of irradiation followed by 25 s of counting and 5 s of irradiation followed by 125 s of counting. Matthews is currently analyzing the data collected from the July 2020 experiment and will include these results in his PhD thesis.
Others that have contributed to the design, construction, testing, operation, and data analysis related to FLUFFY include: Josh Brown, Lee Bernstein, Bethany Goldblum, Donny Nordwick, Aysia Demby, Jon Batchelder, Thibault Laplace, Joey Gordon, Juan Manfredi, and Stephen Yates.
Stay tuned for published results!
FLUFFY in operation! - A capsule containing a sample is rapidly transported between the neutron beam and the HPGe clover array.