Are high energy proton beams ideal for AB-BNCT? A brief discussion from the viewpoint of fast neutron contamination control

作者：Lee Pei Yi; Liu Yuan Hao^*; Jiang Shiang Huei

来源：Applied Radiation and Isotopes, 2014, 88: 206-210.

DOI：10.1016/j.apradiso.2014.03.008

• Accelerator-based BNCT
• Fast neutron contamination
• High energy proton beam

High energy proton beam (> 8 MeV) is favorable for producing neutrons with high yield. However, the produced neutrons are of high energies. These high energy neutrons can cause severe fast neutron contamination and degrade the BNCT treatment quality if they are not appropriately moderated. Hence, this study aims to briefly discuss the issue, from the viewpoint of fast neutron contamination control, whether high energy proton beam is ideal for AB-BNCT or not. In this study, D2O, PbF4, CaF2, and Fluentar (TM) were used standalone as moderator materials to slow down 1-, 6-, and 10-MeV parallelly incident neutrons. From the calculated results, we concluded that neutrons produced by high energy proton beam could not be easily moderated by a single moderator to an acceptable contamination level and still with reasonable epithermal neutron beam intensity. Hence, much more complicated and sophisticated designs of beam shaping assembly have to be developed when using high energy proton beams.

• 出版日期2014-6
• 单位清华大学