Shielding study on iron and concrete assemblies of bremsstrahlung photons and photoneutrons from copper target bombarded by 18, 28 and 38 MeV electrons

Abstract

Following the angular distribution measurements of bremsstrahlung photons and photoneutrons, we measured the distributions of photon and neutron dose rates in the iron and concrete assemblies using a copper target bombarded by 18, 28 and 38 MeV electrons at the electron linear accelerator (linac) of Hokkaido University. In this experiment, seven types of shielding assemblies of iron and concrete layers were used and the photon and neutron dosemeters were inserted into the assemblies to get the depth-dose distribution. The measured results were compared with the results calculated using the Monte Carlo code MCNP5 to verify the calculated results. The calculated results of the ambient dose equivalent rates were in agreement with the measured results within 30% accuracy. Since no work on the radiation behavior in the shielding wall of medical linac room has ever been reported, this work gives valuable benchmark data for the detailed shielding design with high accuracy.