Microscopic cross section, the build-up factor, and their uses in the nuclear industry
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the phenomena of neutron attenuation and the build-up factor, along with their possible uses in nuclear shielding. The neutron attenuations of graphite, copper, Lucite and water is measured for various material thicknesses and used to determine the microscopic cross sections of those materials, as well as introduce the build-up factor observed in water and Lucite and its utilization for those two materials in different applications in the nuclear industry. The neutron attenuation as a function of thickness for four materials was observed and analysed to produce four associated linear functions, relating the net beam intensity decay to the thickness. The absolute value of the slope of those linear graphs were used to obtain the microscopic cross section of each material and compare it to the known values. The microscopic cross sections were determined as 8.616 barns for copper, 4.803 barns for graphite, 186.7 barns for Lucite and 63.29 barns for water and agreed with the theoretically excepted ones within an experimental error, except for the values of water and Lucite, which didn’t agree, due to the interference of the build-up factor. This concept of the build-up factor was then discussed along with it’s various uses in the nuclear industry in particular in radiation shielding for water.
References
J.C. Luxat, “Neutron reactions”, McMaster Engineering Physics 3D03 Lecture notes (2015) 1-15
A. Ganzory, “Neutron Material Attenuation Lab Report”, McMaster Engineering Physics 3D03 Lab Report 3 (2015)
B. Diacon, “Neutron Material Attenuation”, McMaster Engineering Physics 3D03 Lab 3 manual (2008)
A. A. Abdulfattah, “Effect of exposure buildup factors on reactor shielding”, Journal of Al-Nahrain University Vol 13 (2010)
R. L. Kathern and P. L. Ziemer, “The First Fifty Years of Radiation Protection”, Idaho State University (1980)
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