Study of neutron induced outgassing from tungsten alloy for ATLAS FCAL

The use of sintered tungsten alloy slugs as absorber in the ATLAS Forward Calorimeter (FCAL) raised concern that it could possibly poison the liquid argon during the detector operation in the hard radiation environment expected at LHC. A vacuum container filled with tungsten slugs was exposed to the fast neutron fluence of 1.5$\cdot$10$^{16}$~n~cm$^{-2}$ at the IBR-30 reactor of JINR, Dubna. The residual gas pressure was analysed. The study was completed by mass spectrometer measurements. An upper limit value of 0.1~ppm was determined for the pollution of liquid argon in FCAL due to outgassing from tungsten slugs under irradiation.