Biological Shield Design and Analysis of KIPT Accelerator-Driven Subcritical Facility

Argonne National Laboratory of the United States and Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology of Ukraine have been collaborating on the conceptual design development of an electron accelerator-driven subcritical facility. The facility will be utilized for performing basic and applied nuclear research, producing medical isotopes, and training young nuclear specialists. This paper presents the design and analyses of the biological shield performed for the top section of the facility. The neutron source driving the subcritical assembly is generated from the interaction of a 100-kW electron beam with a natural uranium target. The electron energy is in the range of 100 to 200 MeV, and it has a uniform spatial distribution. The shield design and the associated analyses are presented including different parametric studies. In the analyses, a significant effort was dedicated to the accurate prediction of the radiation dose outside the shield boundary as a function of the shield thickness without geometrical approximations or material homogenization. The MCNPX Monte Carlo code was utilized for the transport calculation of electrons, photons, and neutrons. Weight window variance-reduction techniques were introduced, and the dose equivalent outside the shield can be calculated with reasonably good statistics.