EXPERIMENTAL DETERMINATION OF ANISOTROPIC EMISSION OF NEUTRONS FROM 252CF NEUTRON SOURCE WITH THE SPHERICAL PROTECTION CASE

Abstract

Abstract The anisotropic emission of neutrons from a cylindrical X1 252Cf source with the spherical external casing was experimentally determined. The influence of metal materials and shapes of the external casing to the anisotropy factor, FI(θ), was assessed by the Monte Carlo calculation, before performing the measurement. The results of the calculation implied that light- and spherical-shaped external casing decreases the anisotropic emission of neutrons from a cylindrical source and the nature of the material does not affect the anisotropic emission to a large extent. The experimental results obtained when a spherical-shaped aluminum protection case was employed also revealed that the anisotropy factor was close to 1.0 with a wide zenith angle range. Considering the source handling and measures against mechanical impact to the source, we designed an SUS304-made spherical protection case for a renovated source delivering apparatus. With the SUS304-made spherical protection case, the measured anisotropy factor FI(90) was determined to be 1.002 ± 0.002 (k = 1). Results from the experiments also indicated that the measured anisotropy factor has a flat distribution from 55 to 125° with zenith angle.