The spatial distribution of thermal and epithermal neutrons in a graphite moderated spallation neutron field

Abstract The Gamma-3 assembly is located at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia. It consists of a cylindrical lead target ( o  = 8 cm, L  = 58.8 cm) surrounded by reactor grade graphite (110 × 110 × 60 cm). The target was irradiated with a beam of 1.6 GeV deuterons from the Nuclotron accelerator and CR-39 track detectors coupled to LR-115 2B film were used to measure the slow neutron distribution on the surface of the graphite. The detection efficiency of the CR-39 in the CR-39/LR-115 2B system was measured using a custom made calibration setup and found to be (1.12 ± 0.05) × 10 −3 and (6.1 ± 1.2) × 10 −4 tracks per neutron, for thermal and epithermal neutrons respectively, under the etching and counting procedures described in this work. The irradiation of the Gamma-3 was also simulated using MCNPX 2.7 Monte Carlo code and good agreement between the experimental and calculated track densities was found. This serves as a good validation for the computational models used to simulate spallation neutron production, transport and moderation.