Development of Neutron Dosimeter Using CR-39 for Measurement of Ambient Dose Equivalent

A CR-39 has good advantages such as cumulative type dosimeter, small fading effect and gamma-ray insensitive. Therefore, we developed the wide energy-range environmental neutron dosimeter using eight CR-39s for area monitoring in this study. This dosimeter is made of octagonal columnar polyethylene block which height is 60 mm and bottom side is 25 mm. The dosimeter contains two types of CR-39s for fast neutron detection and slow neutron detection. Four CR-39s for fast neutron detection are used for detection of recoil protons produced by H (n, p) reactions. Four CR-39s for slow neutron detection are used with boron nitride converter to detect alpha-rays produced by 10B (n, α) 7Li reactions. Ambient dose equivalent is obtained by adding the number of etch-pits observed in four CR-39s for fast neutron detection to the number of etch-pits observed in four CR-39s for slow neutron detection with appropriate constants respectively. Dosimeters were irradiated with some energetic neutrons and evaluated results of ambient dose equivalent were compared with results from neutron transport calculations. Energy response of dosimeter shows good agreement with neutron fluence to ambient dose equivalent conversion coefficients. Directional dependence of dosimeter is at the same level as the rem-counter.