Design of photon converter and photoneutron target for High power electron accelerator based BNCT

Faezeh Rahmani; Samaneh Seifi; Hossein Tavakoli Anbaran; Farshad Ghasemi

doi:10.1016/j.apradiso.2015.08.008

Design of photon converter and photoneutron target for High power electron accelerator based BNCT

Appl Radiat Isot. 2015 Dec:106:45-8. doi: 10.1016/j.apradiso.2015.08.008. Epub 2015 Aug 10.

Authors

Faezeh Rahmani¹, Samaneh Seifi², Hossein Tavakoli Anbaran², Farshad Ghasemi³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physics, K. N. Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran. Electronic address: FRahmani@kntu.ac.ir.
² Department of Nuclear Physics, Shahrood University, Shahrood, Islamic Republic of Iran.
³ Department of Radiation Application, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran.

PMID: 26278347
DOI: 10.1016/j.apradiso.2015.08.008

Abstract

An electron accelerator, ILU-14, with current of 10 mA and 100 kW in power has been considered as one of the options for neutron source in Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT). The final design of neutron target has been obtained using MCNPX to optimize the neutron production. Tungsten in strip shape and D2O in cylindrical form have been proposed as the photon converter and the photoneutron target, respectively. In addition calculation of heat deposition in the photon target design has been considered to ensure mechanical stability of target. The results show that about 8.37×10(12) photoneutron/s with average energy of 615 keV can be produced by this neutron source design. In addition, using an appropriate beam shaping assembly an epithermal neutron flux of the order of 1.24×10(8) cm(-2) s(-1) can be obtained for BNCT applications.

Keywords: Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT); High power electron accelerator; Photon converter; Photoneutron reaction; Photoneutron target.

MeSH terms

Boron Neutron Capture Therapy*
Electrons*
Neutrons*
Photons*