Design and simulations of the neutron dump for the back-streaming white neutron beam at CSNS

For nuclear data measurements with a white neutron source, to control the background at the detector is a key issue. The neutron dump which locates at the end of the white neutron beam line at CSNS has a very important impact to the neutron and gamma backgrounds in the endstation. A sophisticated neutron dump was designed to reduce the backgrounds to the level of about 10−8 relative to the neutron flux. In this paper, the method to suppress both neutron and gamma backgrounds near a white-spectrum neutron dump is introduced. The optimized geometry structure and materials of the dump are described, and the neutron and gamma space distributions have been calculated by using the FLUKA code for different operation settings which are defined by beam spots of Φ30 mm, Φ60 mm and 90 mm×90 mm, respectively.