0
$\begingroup$

Hi there I was wondering if anyone could help me with how to approach this problem that I have. I'm looking to find the neutron flux outside of a cylindrical container which is made of steel, however in each container there are also 16 other small cylindrical containers (stacked 4 x 4, see diagram ) also made of steel. These small cylindrical containers are what is containing my radioactive source that is producing neutrons. In between the small containers is just air so I'm assuming that would have minimal effect on attenuation. I am trying to solve this problem using the diffusion equation in cylindrical coordinates but I have a feeling that won't work very well as my medium isn't uniform radially. Any help on how to break this down to find a good approximation of the neutron flux outside the container would be helpful, even if assumptions have to be made. (Please don't tell me to use MCNP I would like to be able to do this by hand or using python would be fine). My main problem is knowing how to couple the equations between my volumetric sources and the different shielding materials. enter image description here

$\endgroup$
1
  • $\begingroup$ You need to provide more information on what you are trying to solve. First, steel cylinders are not going to be a source of neutrons. Do you mean gamma radiation instead? Is this a critical configuration (operating reactor) or a fixed source problem (shielding problem)? The cross sections are going to be complicated functions of energy, so there is not going to be a simple analytic solution. Even if you had multigroup cross sections, the geometry is complicated, so there would be no simple analytic solution in space. If this is a "real" problem, your best option is a Monte Carlo code. $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 9 at 13:20

0