ActiWiz – optimizing your nuclide inventory at proton accelerators with a computer code

Abstract

When operating an accelerator one always faces unwanted, but inevitable beam losses. These result in activation of adjacent material, which in turn has an obvious impact on safety and handling constraints. One of the key parameters responsible for activation is the chemical composition of the material which often can be optimized in that respect. In order to facilitate this task also for non-expert users the ActiWiz software has been developed at CERN. Based on a large amount of generic FLUKA Monte Carlo simulations the software applies a specifically developed risk assessment model to provide support to decision makers especially during the design phase as well as common operational work in the domain of radiation protection.

Statistical sampling applied to the radiological characterization of historical waste

“…Actiwiz is a software developed at CERN to build a radiological hazard assessment for an arbitrary material exposed to the radiological environment of the accelerator complex [13,14]. The application was developed to give quick answers to general questions about radiological hazards without the need for the user to implement complex input files with a Monte Carlo code such as FLUKA [15,16].…”

“…The results of these simulations are stored as a database in Actiwiz [13,14] and the user can run calculations on predefined simulated scenarios.…”

“…Amongst the information obtained by running Actiwiz [13,14], the interest for the present study lies mainly in the establishment of expected radionuclide inventories and calculation of theoretical scaling factors. The radionuclide inventory is defined as the complete list of radionuclides, together with their activity, produced by activation of a given material.…”

“…For the present study, extensive Actiwiz [13,14] calculations were carried out using the chemical composition of copper CuOFE from CERN's material catalogue [17]. This composition was exposed to typical CERN irradiation scenarios.…”

Radiation Protection Considerations

“… The selection of construction material must consider activation properties to minimize the dose to personnel and the production of radioactive waste. In order to guide the user a web-based code (ActiWiz) is available for CERN accelerators [3].…”