Ponente
Descripción
Neutrons are intentionally used or incidentally created in various scenarios. Depending on the neutron energy, this kind of radiation can dominate the total dose received. Thus, the detection of neutrons, for radiation protection purposes, is an important issue in areas such as basic research, nuclear power plants, healthcare, industrial applications, defense and homeland security. The commercially available detectors for area monitoring are based on polyethylene moderated proportional counters [KNO10]. They were designed in the late nineties, according to the ICRP74 recommendations [ICRP74], in order to measure the ambient to dose equivalent H(10).
For continuous neutron fields, commercial surveys fits well the recommended response up to 10 or 20 MeV [IAEA2001]. At higher energies, the response of most of the commercial dosimeters present underestimations of the ambient dose (H(10)). This is a major concern in modern medical applications, such as proton therapy, where secondary neutrons are produced with energies spanning from 60 up to 250 MeV[AGO98, FAR15, MAR16].
For pulsed fields, i. e. when the neutron intensity presents large variations in short periods of time, there are currently several concerns about the reliability of commercial neutron dosimeters [KLE06, CAR14]. This is a major issue for the radiation protection in the new particle accelerator technologies, for example synchrotrons and medical linacs, where beam losses produce short bursts of secondary neutron radiation; or pulsed neutron facilities for basic research and applications, such as spallation and fusion sources, high intensity lasers, among others.
At UPC, provided the experience gained by our group in the design of complex neutron detectors for research in nuclear physics, we have started a project for the design of improved ambient neutron dosimeters. The new designs are intended for application in pulsed fields and proton therapy. The status and future of the project is presented.
