Improving Hiroshima Air-Over-Ground Thermal/Epithermal Activation Calculations Using a MUSH Model to Show the Importance of Local Shielding

摘要

Achieving agreement between measured and calculated neutron activation data resulting from Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-bomb detonations has been a major problem since the early 1980's. This has been particularly true for the materials that are activated by thermal and epithermal neutrons. Since thermal and epithermal neutrons are not transported very far from the weapon, the local shielding environment around the measurement location can be very important. A set of calculations incorporating an average density local-environment material (mush) has been made to demonstrate that the local environment plays an important role in the calculation-measurement agreement process. The optimum solution would be to include the local environment in all thermal neutron response calculations.