Neutron Yields of Thick Be Target Bombarded with Low Energy Deuterons

Utilization of the 9Be(d,n) reaction is an important option for compact accelerator-driven neutron sources, especially for low energy accelerators. It is suitable for small scale thermal or cold neutron sources. However the existing neutron yield data of the Be(d,n) reaction show large discrepancies in the low energy range. We have measured the neutron yields from thick Be target bombarded with 0.2 – 3 MeV deuterons at PKU. Here we compared our results with those from other authors. In general, Kononov's data show the best agreement with ours. We present the total and the forward-direction neutron yields in terms of empirical formulas obtained from satisfactory fits of our data.