Experimental shielding evaluation of the radiation protection provided by the structurally significant components of residential structures

Abstract

The human health and environmental effects following a postulated accidental release of radioactive material to the environment have been a public and regulatory concern since the early development of nuclear technology. These postulated releases have been researched extensively to better understand the potential risks for accident mitigation and emergency planning purposes. The objective of this investigation is to provide an updated technical basis for contemporary building shielding factors for the US housing stock. Building shielding factors quantify the protection from ionising radiation provided by a certain building type. Much of the current data used to determine the quality of shielding around nuclear facilities and urban environments is based on simplistic point-kernel calculations for 1950s era suburbia and is no longer applicable to the densely populated urban environments realised today. To analyse a building's radiation shielding properties, the ideal approach would be to subject a variety of building types to various radioactive sources and measure the radiation levels in and around the building. While this is not entirely practicable, this research analyses the shielding effectiveness of ten structurally significant US housing-stock models (walls and roofs) important for shielding against ionising radiation. The experimental data are used to benchmark computational models to calculate the shielding effectiveness of various building configurations under investigation from two types of realistic environmental source terms. Various combinations of these ten shielding models can be used to develop full-scale computational housing-unit models for building shielding factor calculations representing 69.6 million housing units (61.3%) in the United States. Results produced in this investigation provide a comparison between theory and experiment behind building shielding factor methodology.

Contaminant deposition building shielding factors for US residential structures

“…This manuscript is the third in a series reporting on the methodology applied by Dickson (2013) to develop validated building shielding factors (also known as protection factors) for exposures from contaminant deposition on the roof and surrounding surfaces for a variety of generic US homes. These shielding factors are considered point-estimates of the total reduction in exposure an occupant would receive while residing within their primary residence after plume passage from contaminant deposition on the roof and surrounding ground.…”

“…The second publication in this series (Dickson and Hamby 2014b) reports on the methodology applied by Dickson (2013) to develop validated building shielding factors for exposure within a semi-infinite cloud of radioactive material for a variety of generic US homes. Dickson and Hamby (2014b) presents a detailed discussion on the important parameters and assumptions made to design each full-scale computational housing-unit model and the methods used to calculate a data-set of validated building shielding factors for generic residential housing units covering a range of primary weather barrier materials of varying density thicknesses.…”

“…The first publication (Dickson and Hamby 2014a) reports on the important parameters and assumptions made to characterize a realistic source term, the common primary weather barriers of US housing stock, the experimental and computational methods necessary to analyze the attenuating properties of a variety of general purpose construction materials and shielding models, and reduction factors for ten shielding models representing 69.6 million housing units (61.3%) in the United States.…”

Trends in reinforced composite design for ionizing radiation shielding applications: a review

“…DOE gives room for multiple input factors to be controlled, determining their effect on the desired responses (RPE; l m; Cost, Weight). By controlling numerous input factors at the same time, DOE can recognize important interaction, main effect and higher order effect of factors that could have been missed when using one-factor-at-a-time strategy [58]. When DOE is employed, all potential blends can be researched (full factorial) or just a segment of the potential mixes (partial factorial).…”

Determinação da blindagem de um novo laboratório de pesquisa contendo um equipamento de Radiologia Intervencionista usando o método Monte Carlo

“…Os resultados foram comparados com o programaWinXcom (GERWARD et al, 2001, 2004 e analisados em termos da incidência energética do fóton e profundidade de penetração. Dessa maneira, foi demonstrado que o tijolo contendo escória de aço oferece uma blindagem mais eficiente do que os outros tijolos avaliados e é ecologicamente correto.Nos diversos trabalhos selecionados, os cálculos foram determinados seguindo as recomendações da NCRP(NCRP, 1976; NCRP, 2004) e estudos relacionados à blindagem.Estes cálculos seguiram a definição de alguma grandeza que limitasse a exposição, como dose ambiental(COSTA e CALDAS, 2002; ALMEIDA JR. et al, 2014), dose efetiva(SANTOS et al, 2009), kerma no ar (NCRP, 2004) ou a resposta do detector(DICKSON e HAMBY, 2014). Contudo, alguns estudos(SANTOS et al, 2009; ALMEIDA JR, 2014; ALMEIDA JR et al, 2014) mostraram que a grandeza kerma (K) superestima a espessura das barreiras e a…”