Measurement of neutron spectra generated from bombardment of 4 to 24 MeV protons on a thick 9Be target and estimation of neutron yields

Abstract

A systematic study on the measurement of neutron spectra emitted from the interaction of protons of various energies with a thick beryllium target has been carried out. The measurements were carried out in the forward direction (at 0° with respect to the direction of protons) using CR-39 detectors. The doses were estimated using the in-house image analyzing program autoTRAK_n, which works on the principle of luminosity variation in and around the track boundaries. A total of six different proton energies starting from 4 MeV to 24 MeV with an energy gap of 4 MeV were chosen for the study of the neutron yields and the estimation of doses. Nearly, 92% of the recoil tracks developed after chemical etching were circular in nature, but the size distributions of the recoil tracks were not found to be linearly dependent on the projectile energy. The neutron yield and dose values were found to be increasing linearly with increasing projectile energies. The response of CR-39 detector was also investigated at different beam currents at two different proton energies. A linear increase of neutron yield with beam current was observed.

Study of neutron-induced background and its effect on the search of 0νββ decay in124Sn

“…The neutron activation was performed using proton beam on Be and Li production targets in the neutron irradiation setup at the Pelletron Linac Facility, Mumbai [25]. Irradiation targets were mounted in a forward direction with respect to the proton beam, close to the production target but outside the vacuum chamber.…”

Radiopurity studies of a rock sample from the Aut region

“…For neutron activation measurements, fast neutrons having a broad energy range upto ∼ 20 MeV were produced at the irradiation setup of the Pelletron Linac Facility, Mumbai, using 9 Be(p,n) 9 B reaction ( = -1.85 MeV) with ∼ 5 mm thick 9 Be target [15]. The maximum proton beam energy (22 MeV) was chosen to cover the energy range of neutron spectra originating from fission and ( , n) reactions in the rocks [16].…”

Neutron Spectrometry and Dosimetry Using CR-39 Detectors

“…The large area spark counting and automatic image analyzing systems can be used to avoid the tedious manual counting procedures. There are new approaches to deal with extremely dense overlapping tracks [29,30]. Recent developments of rapid etching techniques [31,32] can be adopted to reduce the etching time significantly.…”