Performance Of A New Composite Single Crystal Filtered Thermal Neutron Beam For Neutron Capture Therapy Research At The University Of Missouri PDF Download

The University of Missouri (MU) Institute for Nano and Molecular Medicine, the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) and the University of Missouri Research Reactor (MURR) have undertaken a new collaborative research initiative to further the development of improved boron delivery agents for BNCT. The first step of this effort has involved the design and construction of a new thermal neutron beam irradiation facility for cell and small-animal radiobological research at the MURR. In this paper we present the beamline design with the results of pertinent neutronic design calculations. Results of neutronic performance measurements, initiated in February 2008, will also be available for inclusion in the final paper. The new beam will be located in an existing 152.4 mm (6') diameter MURR beam tube extending from the core to the right in Figure 1. The neutron beam that emanates from the berylium reflector around the reactor is filtered with single-crystal silicon and single-crystal bismuth segments to remove high energy, fission spectrum neutrons and reactor gamma ray contamination. The irradiation chamber is downstream of the bismuth filter section, and approximately 3.95 m from the central axis of the reactor. There is sufficient neutron flux available from the MURR at its rated power of 10 MW to avoid the need for cryogenic cooling of the crystals. The MURR operates on average 150 hours per week, 52 weeks a year. In order to take advantage of 7800 hours of operation time per year the small animal BNCT facility will incorparate a shutter constucuted of boral, lead, steel and polyethylene that will allow experimenters to access the irradiation chamber a few minutes after irradiation. Independent deterministic and stochastic models of the coupled reactor core and beamline were developed using the DORT two-dimensional radiation transport code and the MCNP-5 Monte Carlo code, respectively. The BUGLE-80 47-neutron, 20-gamma group cross section library was employed for the DORT computations, in keeping with previous practice for analysis of a number of other NCT neutron facilities worldwide. The standard ENDF/B Version 6.8 cross section libraries were used with MCNP, except that special calculated cross section sets for the single-crystal bismuth and silicon filters in the MCNP calculations were provided to MU and INL specifically for this study by the Korean Atomic Energy Research Institute and, independently, by North Carolina State University. Cross sections for the amorphous bismuth and silicon files on the BUGLE-80 library used with DORT were modified to account for the single-crystal form of these materials using correction factors computed using MCNP. A number of parameter studies were conducted, independently varying the thicknesses of the silicon and bismuth filter sections to find an optimum that maximizes the thermal neutron flux while maintaining the fast-neutron and gamma components of the beam within acceptable ranges. Both the DORT and MCNP beamline optimization computations led to the conclusion that the silicon filtering section should be approximately 55 cm in thickness and the bismuth section should be 8 cm in thickness. The total estimated thermal neutron flux delivered to the irradiation location by the filtered beam, integrated to 0.414 eV, is approximately 9.0 x 108 neutrons/cm2-s. The calculations also yielded an epithermal and fast-neutron kerma of approximately 1.0 x 10-11 cGy-cm2.