• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.315-319
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• 2001

It is shown, that both cosmic radiation (external source) and natural radioactive gases (inner source) are sources of neutrons near the Earth crust. Correlation between the Earth crust dynamics and variations of thermal and slow neutron flux near the Earth surface is studied. It is shown, that variations of neutron flux near the Earth crust can be used for short-term predicting of natural hazards.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of IIIuminating and Electrical Installation Engineers Conference
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.243-247
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• 2009

A Radioactive constraint of the nuclear fuel assembly irradiated by neutron during normal operation cycle of the nuclear power plant is typically on the order of about 3 kGy/h. In order to inspect nuclear fuel assembly using a VT (vision technology) system, the light such as halogen lamp is used. As the halogen lamp has lower color temperature than the sun light, the objects under halogen lamp illumination are seemed to be tinted with red. In this paper, high brightness LED is considered to be used as the light source of VT system. The high brightness LED, which is a key light source of the VT system, have been gamma irradiated at the dose rate of 4 kGy/h during two hours up to a total dose of 8 kGy. The radiation induced color-center in the LED housing cap made of plastics materials is observed.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.309-317
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• 1997

The measured radioactivity of gamma-emitting radionuclides in each radioactive waste drum using the non-destructive waste assay method is underestimated than real radioactivity in radioactive waste drum because the gamma-rays are attenuated within the medium. Therefore, the measured radioactivity should be corrected for the attenuation of gamma-rays. For the correction of the attenuation of gamma-rays, the attenuation correction method should be applied differently by considering the distribution and density of medium in radioactive wastes drum generated from nuclear power plants. In this study, the model drums were fabricated for simulating five types of radioactive waste drums generated from nuclear power plant and the optimum methods of the attenuation correction were experimentally determined to analyze the activity of radionuclides in the waste drum accurately using the segmented gamma scanning system. With the determination of the attenuation correction methods from the experimental results the transmission method and the average density method for the miscellaneous waste drum, the transmission method and the differential peak absorption method for the shielded miscellaneous waste drum were used to measure the density of medium in waste drums. Also, the average density method and the differential peak absorption method for the spent resin drum, the paraffin solidified drum, and the spent filter drum were used.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.44 no.4
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• pp.359-365
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• 2021

A heavy particle accelerator is a device that accelerates particles using high energy and is used in various fields such as medical and industrial fields as well as research. However, secondary neutrons and particle fragments are generated by the high-energy particle beam, and among them, the neutrons do not have an electric charge and directly interact with the nucleus to cause radiation of the material. Quantitative evaluation of the radioactive material produced in this way is necessary, but there are many difficulties in actual measurement during or after operation. Therefore, this study compared and evaluated the generated radioactive material in the concrete shield for protons and carbon ions of specific energy by using the simulation code FLUKA. For the evaluation of each energy of proton beam and carbon ion, the reliability of the source term was secured within 2% of the relative error with the data of the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory(NSRL), which is an internationally standardized data. In the evaluation, carbon ions exhibited higher neutron flux than protons. Afterwards, in the evaluation of radioactive materials under actual operating conditions for disposal, a large amount of short-lived beta-decay nuclides occurred immediately after the operation was terminated, and in the case of protons with a high beam speed, more radioactive products were generated than carbon ions. At this time, radionuclides of ⁴⁴Sc, ³H and ²²Na were observed at a high rate. In addition, as the cooling time elapsed, the ratio of long-lived nuclides increased. For nonparticulate radionuclides, ³H, ²²Na, and for particulate radionuclides, ⁴⁴Ti, ⁵⁵Fe, ⁶⁰Co, ¹⁵²Eu, and ¹⁵⁴Eu nuclides showed a high ratio. In this study, it is judged that it is possible to use the particle accelerator as basic data for facility maintenance, repair and dismantling through the prediction of radioactive materials in concrete according to the cooling time after operation and termination of operation.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.10
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• pp.2250-2261
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• 2020

Accurate localization of radioactive materials is crucial in homeland security and radiological emergencies. Coded-aperture gamma camera is an interesting solution for such applications and can be developed into portable real-time imaging devices. However, traditional reconstruction methods cannot effectively deal with signal-independent noise, thereby hindering low-noise real-time imaging. In this study, a novel reconstruction method with excellent noise-suppression capability based on a multi-layer perceptron (MLP) is proposed. A coded-aperture gamma camera based on pixel detector and coded-aperture mask was constructed, and the process of radioactive source imaging was simulated. Results showed that the MLP method performs better in noise suppression than the traditional correlation analysis method. When the Co-57 source with an activity of 1 MBq was at 289 different positions within the field of view which correspond to 289 different pixels in the reconstructed image, the average contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) obtained by the MLP method was 21.82, whereas that obtained by the correlation analysis method was 5.85. The variance in CNR of the MLP method is larger than that of correlation analysis, which means the MLP method has some instability in certain conditions.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.331-339
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• 2022

The purpose of this study was to evaluate maternal organ and fetal doses by week of pregnancy for pregnant women nuclear medicine practitioners in the nuclear medicine field. In addition, we intend to present basic data for the management of exposure doses of female nuclear medicine practitioners. In this study, phantoms of childbearing women, 3, 6, 9 months pregnant women were simulated using MCNPX(Monte Carlo N-Particle Extended) among the Monte Carlo methods. First, volume source was constructed based on 10 cm of the anterior part of the lower abdomen of the phantom, and the organ and fetal doses were evaluated for each week of the pregnant woman according to the type of radioactive isotope. Second, the organ and fetal dose of pregnant women were evaluated by increasing the distance between the source and the abdominal surface by 50 and 100 cm. As a result, ¹⁸F sources showed high organ and fetal doses in pregnant women 0 to 3 months, and the dose distribution gradually decreased in 6 to 9 months pregnant women. The distribution of organ and fetal doses for ⁹⁹mTc and ¹²³I sources showed the same tendency as that of ¹⁸F, and the overall absorbed dose distribution was relatively lower than that of ¹⁸F. Through this study, it is considered that workers in the early stages of pregnancy within 3 months will need appropriate management to minimize occupational exposure dose.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.10
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• pp.3907-3912
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• 2023

Radiation portal monitors (RPMs) installed at airports and harbors to prevent illicit trafficking of radioactive materials generally use large plastic scintillators. However, their energy resolution is poor and radionuclide identification is nearly unfeasible. In this study, to improve isotope identification, a RPM system based on a multi-array plastic scintillator and convolutional neural network (CNN) was evaluated by measuring the spectra of radioactive sources. A multi-array plastic scintillator comprising an assembly of 14 hexagonal scintillators was fabricated within an area of 50 × 100 cm². The energy spectra of ¹³⁷Cs, ⁶⁰Co, ²²⁶Ra, and ⁴K (KCl) were measured at speeds of 10-30 km/h, respectively, and an energy-weighted algorithm was applied. For the CNN, 700 and 300 spectral images were used as training and testing images, respectively. Compared to the conventional plastic scintillator, the multi-arrayed detector showed a high collection probability of the optical photons generated inside. A Compton maximum peak was observed for four moving radiation sources, and the CNN-based classification results showed that at least 70% was discriminated. Under the speed condition, the spectral fluctuations were higher than those under dwelling condition. However, the machine learning results demonstrated that a considerably high level of nuclide discrimination was possible under source movement conditions.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.56 no.9
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• pp.3872-3883
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• 2024

This study investigates the effects of Zinc (Zn), Manganese (Mn), and Iron (Fe) additions on the microstructure, corrosion behaviour, biocompatibility, mechanical, and gamma-ray shielding properties of Magnesium (Mg) alloys prepared in various compositions using powder metallurgy (PM). The microstructure and mechanical properties of these alloys were analyzed using electron microscopes (SEM and FE-SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) methods. The results showed positive changes in the material's structure when the percentage of zinc added to pure magnesium increased. It was observed that the material became ductile, and the ductile fracture increased when the zinc ratio increased. The gamma-ray shielding properties of newly produced Mg-based alloys have also been discussed since they have a high potential for use in space technologies. Radiation shielding measurements have been performed using a 3" × 3" NaI(Tl) scintillation detector NaI (Tl) gamma-ray spectrometer. The gamma-ray shielding parameters such as the linear attenuation coefficients (μ_l), mass attenuation coefficient (μ_m), effective atomic number (Z_eff), half-value layer (HVL), and tenth-value layer (TVL) have been determined experimentally at photon energies of 0.511 MeV (emitted from a²²Na radioactive point source) and 1.173 MeV and 1.332 MeV (emitting from a⁶⁰Co radioactive point source). The obtained parameters have been compared to the theoretical results of the XCOM software, and a satisfactory agreement has been found. It can be said from the results that the Mg30Zn alloy has the best shielding properties among the produced materials.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.319-324
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• 2006

Release rate is one of the important items for the environmental impact assessment caused by radioactive materials in case of an accidental release from the nuclear facilities. In this study, the uncertainty of the estimated release rate is evaluated using Monte Carlo method. Gaussian plume model and linear programming are used for estimating the release rate of a source material. Tracer experiment is performed at the Yeoung-Kwang nuclear site to understand the dispersion characteristics. The optimized release rate was 1.56 times rather than the released source as a result of the linear programming to minimize the sum of square errors between the observed concentrations of the experiment and the calculated ones using Gaussian plume model. In the mean time, 95% confidence interval of the estimated release rate was from 1.41 to 2.53 times compared with the released rate as a result of the Monte Carlo simulation considering input variations of the Gaussian plume model. We confirm that this kind of the uncertainty evaluation for the source rate can support decision making appropriately in case of the radiological emergencies.

• Journal of Powder Materials
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.432-437
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• 2015

The en-riched $^{58}Ni$ powders are dissolved in acid solution and coated on a Cu target for proton irradiation at cyclotron to produce $^{57}Co$ radioisotope. The condition of the plating bath and the coating process are determined using the en-riched powders. To establish the coating conditions for $^{57}Co$, non-radioactive Co ions are dissolved in an acid solution and electroplated on to a rhodium plate. The thermal diffusion of electroplated Co into a rhodium matrix was studied to apply a $^{57}Co$ Mssbauer source. The diffusion depth from surface to matrix of Co is depended on the annealing temperature and time. The deposited Co atoms diffuse completely into a rhodium (Rh) matrix without substantial loss at an annealing temperature of 1200 for 4 hours.