DRAGON 2-D Simulation of Spatial Self-Shielding Effect in SLOWPOKE-2 Reactor

Abstract

Thermal and epithermal neutron spatial self-shielding plays an important role in neutron activation experiments, neutron radiography, and reactor physics. Recently, an empirical equation was proposed to calculate the spatial self-shielding factors for neutron activation analysis for some regular geometry. Here, we use the DRAGON code to evaluate these factors for cylindrical samples irradiated in the SLOWPOKE-2 reactor. The DRAGON based self-shielding factors are then compared with the proposed empirical equation and corrections are proposed to increase the reliability of these equations.