Presence of neutrons in the low-level background environment estimated by the analysis of the 595.8 keV gamma peak

Abstract

In order to explore possible improvements of the existing techniques developed to estimate the neutron fluence in low-background Ge-spectroscopy systems, gamma spectra were collected by a HPGe detector in the presence of the 252Cf spontaneous fission neutron source. The spectra were taken with and without a Cd envelope on the detector dipstick, with different thicknesses of plastic used to slow down neutrons. We have analyzed the complex 595.8 keV gamma peak, as well as several more gamma peaks following the neutron interactions in the detector itself and surroundings materials. The investigation shows that some changes of the initial neutron spectra can be monitored by the analysis of the 595.8 keV gamma peak. We have found good agreement in the intensity changes between the long-tail component of the 595.8 keV and the 691 keV gamma peak (72Ge(n,n′)72Ge reaction), usually used for the estimation of the fast neutron fluence. Results also suggest that the thermal neutrons can have a stronger influence on creation of the Gaussian-like part of 595.8 keV peak, than on the 139 keV one following 74Ge(n,γ)75mGe reaction and used in the standard methods (Škoro et al., 1992) [8] for determination of the thermal neutron flux.