Vol. 4, 2019

Radiation Protection

COMPARISON OF COMPUTATIONAL AND EXPERIMENTAL DOSE RATES IN A NEUTRON ACTIVATION ANALYSIS FACILITY

Jose Rafael Parga, Sheldon Landsberger

Pages: 72–77

DOI: 10.37392/RapProc.2019.15

The vast majority of radiation protection guidelines in nuclear facilities usually relate from one to a few sources of radiation in very controlled environments. Currently, there are 111 research reactors where neutron activation analysis (NAA) is a major research and teaching component. In particular, NAA can yield a wide variety of exposures due to different types of samples and neutron fluxes. Unlike any other type of radiation laboratories, an NAA facility can contain a large variety of radioactive isotopes as a result of activation products with varying degrees of half-lives and with different intensities of gamma-rays and beta particles. Using MCNP 6.2, a Monte Carlo code developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) for radiation transport, dose rates were computed. The computational results were validated by irradiating several National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) standard reference materials. The samples were allowed to decay during their transfer from the reactor to the NAA laboratory. These computational doses were validated to the experimental doses. Using this information, a database will be developed for accurately predicting the expected doses to researchers working at research reactors and develop better radiation protection standards at NAA facilities.
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