Present status and problems of neutron spectrum unfolding method in reactor dosimetry

Maeda, Shigetaka   ; Iguchi, Tetsuo*

Neutron spectrum unfolding is a widely applied technique to characterize neutron fields for various types of reactor dosimetry, where the neutron spectrum is derived from integral measured data such as multiple-foil activation rates, moderated neutron detector counts, etc. A lot of spectrum unfolding codes have been developed so far and their performances compared to each other. However, standardized metrology for neutron spectrum unfolding is not satisfactorily established yet from the viewpoint of adequate selection and usage of unfolding codes, response function database and input data set preparation. This article reviews the present status on the neutron spectrum unfolding techniques mainly related to the reactor dosimetry with activation foils and discusses the validity of the solution spectra obtained from different kinds of unfolding codes under a typical fast reactor neutron field. The results show that the solution spectrum strongly depends on a guess spectrum required to the input data as well as the theoretical assumption in each unfolding code. The issues to improve the accuracy of reactor dosimetry are summarized on the input spectrum, nuclear database and the standardization of unfolding procedure, respectively.