Investigation the Effects of Neutron Source Number and Arrangement in Landmines Detection by Thermal Neutron Capture Gamma Ray Analysis

Leila Abdolahi Shiramin,Seyed Farhad Masoudi

doi:10.4236/wjnst.2012.22009

Abstract

Thermal neutron capture can be used as a successful technique for detection of non-metallic landmines via the detection of their constituent like nitrogen. Recently, it has been shown that the detection of 10.829 MeV photons from the 14N(n,γ)15N reaction can be used for finding the landmines. In this method a high-energy neutron source like 241Am-Be inside water as a moderator is used to have thermal neutron. In this paper we have investigated the effects of the number of neutron sources and their orientation on the gamma ray spectrum by using MCNP4C code. The best case for number of sources and their positions and orientations have been achieved corresponding to maximum flux of 10.829 MeV photons.

Highlights

During the recent years many efforts have been made to improve nuclear methods for the detection of landmines [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
In this paper we have investigated the effects of the number of neutron sources and their orientation on the gamma ray spectrum by using MCNP4C code
In order to investigate the effect of placement of sources in the water tank on photon flux spectrum, the sources was placed at different configurations

Summary

Introduction

During the recent years many efforts have been made to improve nuclear methods for the detection of landmines [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. The most important advantage of methods based on neutron reactions is that neutrons have high penetration ability and the detection of landmines is possible even when they are hidden at the high depth. One method of landmines detection is based on measurement of the 10.829 MeV gamma-ray from the 14N(n,γ)15N reaction [10]. This procedure is advantageous because the gamma-rays of about 11 MeV do not occur in natural background. The only exception is 29Si which emits gamma-ray of 10.607 MeV via interaction with thermal neutrons, but with low percentage. The maximum value for 10.829 MeV photon fluxes that depends on the numbers and orientations of the sources has been achieved by using the result of MCNP4C simulation

Material and Methods

Results and Discussions

Conclusions