Simulation of neutron transmission performance of metallic spherical shell under temperature dependent neutron cross section

Northwest Institute of Nuclear Technology, 710024, Xi'an, China

^* e-mail: zuoyinghong@nint.at.cn
^** e-mail: zhujinhui@nint.ac.cn
^*** e-mail: xiehonggang@nint.ac.cn

Published online: 30 September 2020

Abstract

To study the effect of temperature dependent neutron cross section on the neutron transmission performance of typical metallic spherical shells, this paper generated the temperature dependent neutron cross section data by using NJOY program, and established the computational model of interaction of neutron with iron and aluminium spherical shell. The temperature evolution of energy spectrum of transmitted neutron and secondary gamma ray, and the number ratio of transmitted neutrons to secondary gamma rays has been studied at various neutron energies. The results show that only when the energies of the incident neutron are in a certain range, the temperature dependent cross sections can have a significant effect on the energy spectrum of the rays penetrating the spherical shell. For different metal materials, the transmitted neutron spectrum and the secondary gamma ray spectrum will be significantly affected when the temperature increases to different high value. Generally, the transmitted neutron number decreases with the increase of temperature, and the number ratio of transmitted neutron to secondary gamma ray also decreases with the increase of temperature, while the changing trend of number of secondary gamma ray with temperature is related to the type of shell material.