Photon spectrometry in thermal neutron standard field

An NE213 liquid scintillation counter (5.08 cm in diameter and 5.08 cm long) with an LiF filter was used to measure the energy distribution of photons mixed in a thermal neutron field. The response function matrix of photons in an energy range up to 10 MeV was calculated by the EGS4/PRESTA code and properly folded with a resolution function. Pulse height spectra measured with a set of reference γ-ray sources were compared to the calculated response function and agreed very well for all reference γ-ray sources. The GRAVEL and MIEKE codes from the HEPRO program were used to unfold measured pulse height spectra. Energy distributions obtained by the unfolding were applied to evaluate the effective dose equivalent of photons mixed in a thermal neutron field.