Determination of Carbon Concentration in Soil Using the Tagged Neutron Method

The results of determining the mass concentration of carbon in soil are discussed. The measurements were made on a facility operating according to the tagged neutron method, which consists of irradiating samples with 14 MeV fast neutrons and detecting the characteristic spectra of gamma rays from inelastic neutron scattering at specific time ranges between neutron emission and arrival of the γ-quantum signal. The values of the accuracies of the measurements have been estimated, the standard deviation of the repeated measurements for concentrations of carbon of 1–3% was σ r = 0.14%, the convergence to the calculated values was σ r = 0.2%.