Design of a direction-dependent neutron dosimeter

A theoretical design for a neutron dosimeter has been investigated to determine whether it is capable of estimating effective dose. The design is essentially simple: a 10.16 cm radius sphere of borated scintillator that is interrogated by a tetrahedral arrangement of photomultipliers. A sigmoid artificial neural network was used to analyse MCNP calculations of the neutron capture distribution within the sphere for energies from thermal to 16 MeV, incident from 26 separate directions. Results to date are sufficiently encouraging that a prototype device is now under consideration.