Calculations of anisotropy factors for radionuclide neutron sources due to scattering from source encapsulation and support structures.

A model has been developed for calculating the angular neutron fluence distributions for radionuclide neutron sources that are heavily encapsulated or surrounded by source support structures as a source holder and a source movement system. These structures may cause an anisotropic neutron fluence distribution. This should be taken into account in the neutron-measuring instruments calibration procedure. The calculations were made for two types of widely used neutron sources, (241)Am-Be and (252)Cf, by combining an in-house code simulating the (9)Be(alpha,n) reactions and the Monte Carlo code MCNP-4C. As a result, anisotropy factors in the direction perpendicular to the source capsule axis for bare neutron sources were evaluated to be 1.012, 1.030 and 1.039 for (252)Cf in a standard Amersham X1 capsule, (241)Am-Be in a X3 capsule and (241)Am-Be in a X4 capsule, respectively. These values are in reasonable agreement with the published data. If the support structures are included in the MCNP simulation, the anisotropy factors for these neutron sources increase by approximately 10%.