Neutron transmission measurements for silica glass at the KURNS-LINAC

Lee, J. ; Rossi, F. ; Kodama, Yu ; Hironaka, Kota ; Koizumi, Mitsuo ; Sano, Tadafumi*; Matsuo, Yasunori*; Hori, Junichi*

Silica glass has been used as a base and host material in vitrified radioactive waste and lithium glass scintillator for neutron detection because of its superb transparency, high heat resistance, and excellent chemical inertness. Therefore, an accurate total cross section of the silica glass is important to evaluate the criticality safety for the vitrified wastes and to understand the neutron response for lithium glass scintillators accurately. In the present study, to provide the accurate total cross section in the thermal and epithermal energy range, the neutron transmission measurements were carried out by a pulsed neutron beam with the time-of-flight method at the Kyoto University Institute for Integrated Radiation and Nuclear Science - Linear Accelerator. We obtained the neutron total cross section of the silica glass in the energy region from 0.002 eV to 25 eV. The obtained results were compared and discussed with the previous results and the evaluated data.