Design of a controllable Am-Be neutron source: A Geant4 simulation.

Authors :: Hu Q
Jia W
Hei D
Li J
Cheng C
Zhao D
Source :: Applied radiation and isotopes : including data, instrumentation and methods for use in agriculture, industry and medicine [Appl Radiat Isot] 2021 Aug; Vol. 174, pp. 109775. Date of Electronic Publication: 2021 May 23.
Publication Year :: 2021
Abstract: In this work, a controllable Am-Be neutron source with self-safety structure was developed. The basic design of the neutron source is composed of AmO <subscript>2</subscript> layer, air layer and Be layer. The AmO <subscript>2</subscript> layer and Be layer are placed parallelly in a stainless-steel tank. The yield and safety of the designed neutron source can be controlled through changing the vacuum level of air layer between the AmO <subscript>2</subscript> layer and Be layer. Geant4 toolkit was used to optimize the geometrical size of each layer and the optimized thickness of the AmO <subscript>2</subscript> layer, air layer and Be layer were 5 μm, 3.4 cm and 300 μm, respectively. When the vacuum level of the air layer was set to 1 kPa, the neutron yield was 5.61 n/10 <superscript>6</superscript> α. For an Am-241 alpha activity of 9.313 × 10 <superscript>9</superscript> Bq, the maximum neutron flux emitted from the Be layer was 4.122 × 10 <superscript>3</superscript> n·cm <superscript>-2</superscript> ·s <superscript>-1</superscript> .<br /> (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Language :: English
ISSN :: 1872-9800
Volume :: 174
Database :: MEDLINE
Journal :: Applied radiation and isotopes : including data, instrumentation and methods for use in agriculture, industry and medicine
Publication Type :: Academic Journal
Accession number :: 34052514
Full Text :: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apradiso.2021.109775