The Design of a Neutron Dosimeter

At present, most of the developed neutron dosimeters that have a moderator with a single counter, applied in neutron radiation fields within large range energies from thermal to MeV neutrons, are not a satisfaction to energy response. The purpose of the article is designing a suitable neutron dosimeter for the radiation protection purpose. In order to overcome the disadvantage of the energy response of the neutron dosimeters combined a single sphere with a single counter, three spheres and three ³He counters were combined for the detector design. The response function of moderators with different thicknesses combined with SP9 ³He counters were calculated with MCNP program MCNP4C [1]. The selection of three different thicknesses of the moderating polyethylene sphere was done with a Matlab program [2]. A suitable combination of three different thicknesses was confirmed for the detector design. The electronic system of the neutron dosimeter was introduced. The fluence to ambient dose-equivalent conversion coefficient were calculated, analyzed and compared with the values recommended in the ICRP 74 Publication [3]. The calculated result explain that it is very significance to this design of neutron dosimeter, it may be applied to the monitor of the ambient dose in the neutron radiation fields, improving at present the status of the energy response of neutron dosimeters.