Radiation transport and shielding
Workers in a nuclear reactor. Photo: A. Gonin/CEA, France

Radiation shielding is a protective shield that is inserted betweeen a source of ionising radiation and the object to protect to reduce the amount of damage that can happen to delicate or biological materials, particularly during transport. The wall design of the protective shield must have adequate thickness and meet safety criteria.

Nuclear, accelerator and fusion systems require complex calculations of shielding and dosimetry. Often these problems are sufficiently complex to require advanced analytical techniques to supplement Monte Carlo methods. The calculations impact key aspects of facilities, from the dose recieved by workers to the fluence load on the pressure vessel and internals.

NEA work on this topic

A community of experts has been formed within the Expert Group on Physics of Reactor Systems (EGPRS) to advance a wide range of steady-state and transient radiation transport, accelerator, shielding and fusion predictions. The predictions are underpinned by experimental data contained in the SINBAD database, overseen by the EGPRS in close collaboration with Radiation Safety Information Computational Center (RSICC). The group provides a state-of-the-art best estimate and uncertainty analysis for many types of reactor systems. 

Under the EGPRS, NEA activities represent the state-of-the-art in international radiation transport activities, some of which can be found below.

Additionally, the group publishes expert guidance in the domain of radiation transport and shielding. The work conducted within EGPRS has led to numerous conference and journal publications, in addition to the NEA technical reports published.

Activities
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