In the first part of the paper, we report on the results obtained when modifying the reflector surrounding the fission core, by replacing pure lead with a layered graphite/lead structure.
We then modified the Mirus reflector by replacing the carbon disc with a two-layered cut-out of the reflector of the Anaconda, and repeated the testing protocol.
With the modified reflector, using the same settings, the highest value achieved was 10.8%, which was our target.
This was repeated for the second experiment with the modified Mirus reflector.
Consumption of desflurane with the standard Mirus reflector and the modified reflector is shown in Fig. 5.
Over the whole experiment, efficiency was 42% for the standard reflector and 64% for the modified reflector.
Although the southernmost reflector appears to be the subducting plate interface shown by triangles, the reflector, having depth >10 km, is irregular and broken.
We first measured the background at all the channels by blocking the reflector.
However, environmental effects modify the signals, causing large amplitude levels in the subtracted signal which can mask information received from weak reflectors such as defects.
Efficiency was higher than 80% for the first three targeted values with the standard reflector (up to 1.8% desflurane), and for the first six targeted values using the modified reflector (up to 3.6% desflurane).
