Investigation the Effects of Neutron Source Number and Arrangement in Landmines Detection by Thermal Neutron Capture Gamma Ray Analysis

Abstract

Thermal neutron capture can be used as a successful technique for detection of non-metallic landmines via the detection of their constituent like nitrogen. Recently, it has been shown that the detection of 10.829 MeV photons from the 14N(n,γ)15N reaction can be used for finding the landmines. In this method a high-energy neutron source like 241Am-Be inside water as a moderator is used to have thermal neutron. In this paper we have investigated the effects of the number of neutron sources and their orientation on the gamma ray spectrum by using MCNP4C code. The best case for number of sources and their positions and orientations have been achieved corresponding to maximum flux of 10.829 MeV photons.