High energy particle background at neutron spallation sources and possible solutions

Modern spallation neutron sources are driven by proton beams ~ GeV energies. Whereas low energy particle background shielding is well understood for reactors sources of neutrons (~20 MeV), for high energies (100s MeV to multiple GeV) there is potential to improve shielding solutions and reduce instrument backgrounds significantly. We present initial measured data on high energy particle backgrounds, which illustrate the results of particle showers caused by high energy particles from spallation neutron sources. We use detailed physics models of different materials to identify new shielding solutions for such neutron sources, including laminated layers of multiple materials. In addition to the steel and concrete, which are used traditionally, we introduce some other options that are new to the neutron scattering community, among which there are copper alloys as used in hadronic calorimeters in high energy physics laboratories. These concepts have very attractive energy absorption characteristics, and simulations predict that the background suppression could be improved by one or two orders of magnitude. These solutions are expected to be great benefit to the European Spallation Source, where the majority of instruments are potentially affected by high energy backgrounds, as well as to existing spallation sources.