Scattering law of a magnesium hydride moderator

Metal hydrides have long been considered possible moderator and pre-moderator materials for neutron sources. These materials have hydrogen density comparable to liquid hydrogen or light water. They usually do not undergo phase transitions in the desired operating range of 0–300 K, and display reasonable resistance to radiation damage. Magnesium hydride is such a simple, robust hydride system. To assess its neutronic usefulness as a moderator material, we determined experimentally the total scattering cross-section of the material. We compared our theoretical results to the experimental total neutron cross-section and to the data from quasi-elastic neutron scattering experiments, and produced a scattering kernel suitable for neutron transport calculations.