Phenomenological calculations of shielding spallation neutron sources

The high level of radiation generated by a spallation source requires the design of an appropriate shielding to surround the source in order to fulfill radiation protection standards. A calculation of the spallation neutron attenuation is presented for various shielding materials, using a phenomenological model, based on the Moyer model. In the first step of the calculation, the interaction length of neutrons for each neutron energy and shielding material was estimated using inelastic cross-sections. In the second step the calculation deals with the attenuation of the neutron flux applying the Moyer model, for each material and neutron energy region. The transmission factors were calculated and compared with experimental data collected from the “Gamma-2” and the “E+T” projects running in JINR (Dubna, Russia). The results of the present work were also compared to the data obtained by different Monte Carlo codes such as MORSE, MCNPX, MARS14 and LAHET.