Benchmarking Residual Dose Rates in a NuMI-like Environment

Activation of various structural and shielding materials is an important issue for many applications. A model developed recently to calculate residual activity of arbitrary composite materials for arbitrary irradiation and cooling times is presented in the paper. Measurements have been performed at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory using a 120 GeV proton beam to study induced radioactivation of materials used for beam line components and shielding. The calculated residual dose rates for the samples studied behind the target and outside of the thick shielding are presented and compared with the measured ones. Effects of energy spectra, sample material and dimensions, their distance from the shielding, and gaps between the shielding modules and walls as well as between the modules themselves were studied in detail. (authors)