Analysis of radioisotope production using accelerator neutron sources by PHITS and cross section data

Hashimoto, Shintaro  ; Nagai, Yasuki*; Minato, Futoshi   ; Tsukada, Kazuaki  

Study for radioisotopes (RIs) production using accelerator neutron sources plays an important role in development of production method to supply stably RIs for medical use. We measured yields of not only Cu produced by neutrons but also Ga by protons in ZnO samples irradiated by neutrons from Be(d,n) reaction with 40-50 MeV deuterons, and developed a powerful method to estimate the yields using a general purpose Monte Carlo particle transport simulation mode PHITS with cross section data of the (d,n) reaction and JENDL-4.0/HE. We found a good agreement between new measured yields and estimated results within a factor of 3. Furthermore, we experimentally observed that yields of Ga are enhanced by covering the samples with polyethylene blocks. However, PHITS cannot reproduce the enhancement probably due to insufficient description of scattered neutrons form the blocks in the calculation.