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

Authors:   Faezeh Rahmani,Samaneh Seifi,Hossein Tavakoli Anbaran,Farshad Ghasemi,
Journal: Applied Radiation and Isotopes
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apradiso.2015.08.008
Abstract: An electron accelerator, ILU-14, with current of 10mA and 100kW 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 8.37×1012photoneutron/s with average energy of 615keV can be produced by this neutron source design. In addition, using an appropriate beam shaping assembly an epithermal neutron flux of the order of 1.24×108cm−2s−1 can be obtained for BNCT applications.