Performance Evaluation of Neutron Absorption Materials with Temperature Change

Some of these facilities are operated at higher than room temperature, thus the neutron absorption material can be directly affected by the surrounding environment where the temperature is not maintained in a constant condition. Meanwhile, a nucleus in an atom is continuously vibrated with the thermal energy, after which there arises a range of relative speeds between a neutron and the nucleus, even for a fixed neutron speed. At higher temperature, the random motion of the nucleus reproduces new resonance with a lower and broader peak, i.e., Doppler broadening of a resonance, and the capture cross section of neutron is revised. Therefore, the performance of neutron absorption materials may vary with a change of temperature. In this study, the absorption abilities of three kinds of neutron absorbers generally used in the reactor core were analyzed at a range of temperatures from 293.6K to 584K. As a result, the neutron absorption abilities for B⁴C and Ag-In-Cd do not vary with the change of temperature, while that for Gd²O³ absorbers was shown to be decreased approximately 3% with reference to that at 293.6K in the temperature range between the 293.6K and 584K. This phenomenon of the Gd²O³ absorber seems to be caused by the Doppler broadening of the neutron absorption cross-section. Therefore, it is expected that the effect of material temperature on the neutron absorption performance is needed to be considered in the design of nuclear reactor and the analysis of radiation shielding