• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.12
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• pp.2910-2917
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• 2020

Digital light processing three-dimensional (3D) printing technique is a powerful tool to rapidly manufacture plastic scintillators of almost any shape or geometric features. In our previous study, the main properties of light output and transmission were analyzed. However, a more detailed study of the other properties is required to develop 3D printed plastic scintillators with expectable and reproducible properties. The 3D printed plastic scintillator displayed an average decay time constants of 15.6 ns, intrinsic energy resolution of 13.2%, and intrinsic detection efficiency of 6.81% for 477 keV Compton electrons from the ¹³⁷Cs γ-ray source. The 3D printed plastic scintillator showed a similar decay time and intrinsic detection efficiency as that of a commercial plastic scintillator BC408. Furthermore, the presented estimates for the properties showed good agreement with the analyzed data.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.50 no.7
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• pp.1154-1159
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• 2018

Precise prediction of the radiation interaction position in scintillators plays an important role in medical and industrial imaging systems. In this research, the incident position of the gamma rays was predicted precisely in a plastic rod scintillator by using attenuation technique and multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural network, for the first time. Also, this procedure was performed using nonlinear regression (NLR) method. The experimental setup is comprised of a plastic rod scintillator (BC400) coupled with two PMTs at two sides, a $^{60}Co$ gamma source and two counters that record count rates. Using two proposed techniques (ANN and NLR), the radiation interaction position was predicted in a plastic rod scintillator with a mean relative error percentage less than 4.6% and 14.6%, respectively. The mean absolute error was measured less than 2.5 and 5.5. The correlation coefficient was calculated 0.998 and 0.984, respectively. Also, the ANN technique was confirmed by leave-one-out (LOO) method with 1% error. These results presented the superiority of the ANN method in comparison with NLR and the other methods. The technique and set up used are simpler and faster than other the previous position sensitive detectors. Thus, the time, cost and shielding and electronics requirements are minimized and optimized.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.5
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• pp.1760-1768
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• 2022

When gamma-camera sensor modules, which are key components of radiation imagers, are derived from the coupling between scintillators and photosensors, the light collection efficiency is an important factor in determining the effectiveness with which the instrument can identify nuclides via their derived gamma-ray spectra. If the pixel area of the scintillator is larger than the pixel area of the photosensor, light loss and cross-talk between pixels of the photosensor can result in information loss, thereby degrading the precision of the energy estimate and the accuracy of the position-of-interaction determination derived from each active pixel in a coded-aperture based gamma camera. Here we present two methods to overcome the information loss associated with the loss of photons created by scintillation pixels that are coupled to an associated silicon photomultiplier pixel. Specifically, we detail the use of either: (1) light guides, or (2) scintillation pixel areas that match the area of the SiPM pixel. Compared with scintillator/SiPM couplings that have slightly mismatched intercept areas, the experimental results show that both methods substantially improve both the energy and spatial resolution by increasing light collection efficiency, but in terms of the image sensitivity and image quality, only slight improvements are accrued.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.3
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• pp.1009-1014
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• 2023

Muon tomography is a useful method for monitoring special nuclear materials (SNMs) such as spent nuclear fuel inside dry cask storage. Multiple Coulomb scattering of muons can be used to provide information about the 3-dimensional structure and atomic number(Z) of the inner materials. Tomography using muons is less affected by the shielding material and less harmful to health than other measurement methods. We developed a muon detector for muon tomography, which consists of a plastic scintillator, 64 long wavelength-shifting (WLS) fibers attached to the top of the plastic scintillator, and silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) connected to both ends of each WLS fiber. The muon detector can acquire X and Y positions simultaneously using a position determination algorithm. The design parameters of the muon detector were optimized using DETECT2000 and Geant4 simulations, and a muon detector prototype was built based on the results. Spatial resolution measurement was performed using simulations and experiments to evaluate the feasibility of the muon detector. The experimental results were in good agreement with the simulation results. The muon detector has been confirmed for use in a muon tomography system.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.6
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• pp.1259-1265
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• 2020

A beta ray scanner was proposed for in-situ discrimination of beta and gamma ray radioactivity. This scanner is based on the principle that gamma and beta rays experience different changes in detection efficiency in scintillators with different geometries, especially with regard to the scintillator thickness. The ratios of the counting rates of gamma rays (R_gamma), beta rays (R_beta), and sample measurements (R_total) in a thick scintillator to those in a thin one are reported. The parameter X_thick, which represents the counting rate contributed by beta rays to the total counting rate in the thick scintillator, was derived as a function of those ratios. The values of R_gamma and R_beta for ⁶⁰Co and ⁹⁰Sr sources were estimated as 3.2 ± 0.057 and 0.99 ± 0.0049, respectively. The estimated beta ray contributions had relative standard deviations of 2.05-4.96%. The estimated range of the beta rays emitted from ⁹⁰Sr was 19 mm as per the Monte Carlo N-Particle simulation, and this value was experimentally verified. Homogeneous and surface contaminations of ⁶⁰Co and ⁹⁰Sr-⁹⁰Y were simulated for application of the proposed method. The counting rate contributed by the beta rays was derived and found to be proportional to the concentration of ⁹⁰Sr-⁹⁰Y contamination.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.681-686
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• 2022

In this study, a scintillation resin for 3D printing was fabricated with 1.0 wt% of PPO organic scintillator, 5.0 wt% of MMA, and commercial acrylic resin. Using the scintillation resin, 3D-shaped plastic scintillator radiation sensors were successfully fabricated quickly and inexpensively with a commercial 3D DLP printer. The 3D printed plastic scintillator has a good dose-output linearity of R-square 0.998 was obtained in the range of 1 to 10 nA of beam current of the 45 MeV proton beam. The developed 3D plastic scintillator has low light output, so there is a limit to its use in low-dose-rate gamma-ray or X-ray dosimetry. However, it was confirmed that the tissue equivalent material could be usefully used for measuring high energy or high dose rates radiation, such as proton beams and ultra-high dose rate beams.

• 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.7
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• pp.2650-2658
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• 2024

In this paper, we use a Monte Carlo (MC) simulation based on Geant4 to investigate the influence of four parameters on the spatial resolution of the lens-coupled lutetium yttrium orthosilicate (LYSO) scintillator, including the thickness of the LYSO scintillator, the F-number and minification factor of the lens, and the incident position of the gamma-rays. Simulation results show that when the gamma-rays are incident along the lens axis, the smaller the thickness, the larger the F-number, the larger the minification factor, the higher the spatial resolution, with an isotropic point spread function (PSF). As the incident position of the gamma-rays deviates from the lens axis, the spatial resolution decreases, and the PSF becomes anisotropic. In addition, by analyzing the whole physical process of the lens-coupled LYSO scintillator from gamma-rays to secondary electrons to fluorescence photons, we aim to provide a detailed analysis of the influence of each parameter on the spatial resolution. The results show that the PSF of the secondary electrons energy deposition is almost constant in the simulation, which determines the upper limit of the spatial resolution. Meanwhile, the dispersion process of the fluorescence photons can explain the reason why each parameter affects the spatial resolution.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.416-419
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• 2014

We grew a $Li_6Lu(BO_3)_3:Ce^{3+}$ single crystal as a new scintillator. And, the scintillation and thermoluminescence properties of the scintillator were determined. The emission spectrum of $Li_6Lu(BO_3)_3:Ce^{3+}$ is located in the range of 370~530 nm, peaking at 416 nm and 439 nm, due to the $5d{\rightarrow}4f$ transition of $Ce^{3+}$ ions. The fluorescence decay time of the crystal is composed two components. The fast component is 34 ns (84%) and the slow component is 125 ns (16%) of the crystal. The afterglow is caused by the electron and hole traps in the crystal lattice. We determined physical parameters of the traps in the crystal. The thermoluminescence trap are composed a trap. The determined activation energy (E) and frequency factor (s) of the TL trap are 1.05 eV and $4.4{\times}10^{10}s^{-1}$, respectively.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.56 no.6
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• pp.1130-1132
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• 2007

In this research, 3D position exploring system was developed to detect direction and position of radiation source by using two general CCD camera. This system consists of a radiation detection device, a controlling device, and a monitoring device. A radiation detection device is composed of a collimator, a scintillator, CCD sensor, and radiation shielding part. Incident radiation is firstly collimated with direction and converted into visual lights in a scintillator. The CCD sensor detect the converted visual light and send a signal as an image. This can explore a radiation source with direction and distance from geometrical structure of two sensors. From these information, the developed 3D position exploring system can provide 3D radiation source information. This research will be useful for managing and processing radioactive materials in remote.