Shielding of elliptic guides with direct sight to the moderator

With the invention of elliptic guides, the neutron flux at instruments can be increased significantly even without sacrificing resolution. In addition, the phase space homogeneity of the delivered neutrons is improved. Using superpolished metal substrates that are coated with supermirror, it is now possible to install neutron guides close to the moderator thus decreasing the illumination losses of the guide and reducing the background because the entrance window of the elliptic guide can be decreased significantly. We have performed Monte Carlo simulations using the program package MCNP5 to calculate the shielding requirements for an elliptic guide geometry assuming that the initial guide section elements are composed of Al substrates. We show that shielding made from heavy concrete shields the neutron and γ -radiation effectively to levels below 1 μ Sv / h . It is shown that the elliptic geometry allows to match the phase space of the transported neutrons easily to the needs of the instruments to be installed. In particular it is possible to maintain a compact phase space during the transport of the neutrons because the reflection losses are strongly reduced.