Neutron spectrometry with Bonner Spheres for area monitoring in particle accelerators.

Selecting the instruments to determine the operational quantities in the neutron fields produced by particle accelerators involves a combination of aspects, which is peculiar to these environments: the energy distribution of the neutron field, the continuous or pulsed time structure of the beam, the presence of other radiations to which the neutron instruments could have significant response and the large variability in the dose rate, which can be observed when moving from areas near the beam line to free-access areas. The use of spectrometric techniques in support of traditional instruments is highly recommended to improve the accuracy of dosimetric evaluations. The multi-sphere or Bonner Sphere Spectrometer (BSS) is certainly the most used device, due to characteristics such as the wide energy range, large variety of active and passive detectors suited for different workplaces, good photon discrimination and the simple signal management. Disadvantages are the poor energy resolution, weight and need to sequentially irradiate the spheres, leading to usually long measurement sessions. Moreover, complex unfolding analyses are needed to obtain the neutron spectra. This work is an overview of the BSS for area monitoring in particle accelerators.

Analysis of computational problems expressing the overall uncertainties: photons, neutrons and electrons.

In the frame of the EU Coordination Action CONRAD (coordinated network for radiation dosimetry), WP4 was dedicated to work on computational dosimetry with an action entitled 'Uncertainty assessment in computational dosimetry: an intercomparison of approaches'. Participants attempted one or more of eight problems. This paper presents the results from problems 4-8-dealing with the overall uncertainty budget estimate; a short overview of each problem is presented together with a discussion of the most significant results and conclusions. The scope of the problems discussed here are: the study of a (137)Cs calibration irradiator; the manganese bath technique; the iron sphere experiment using neutron time-of-flight technique; the energy response of a RADFET detector and finally the sensitivity and uncertainty analysis for the recoil-proton telescope discussed in the companion paper.