Radioisotope power source dose estimation tool (RPS-DET)

Conference · Thu Feb 01 00:00:00 EST 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/AERO.2018.8396766· OSTI ID:1459307

Smith, Michael ^[1]

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1. ORNL

The purpose of this work is to develop a radioisotope power source dose estimation tool (RPS-DET) capable of rapidly predicting accurate neutron and gamma-ray flux/dose implications from various radioisotope power sources (RPSs). RPS-DET can use this information to calculate the flux/dose incident on or absorbed by nearby humans, materials, and electronics over a complex mission lifetime. This simulation tool uses a Matlab user interface to combine common geometry scenarios for traditional and new RPS design configurations to write a particle-transport simulation using Monte Carlo N-Particle (MCNP) 6, which provides results that are automatically post-processed for interactive analysis. The user defines the average age of the PuO2fuel, which determines the appropriate time-dependent gamma-ray and neutron spectra, along with the desired RPS and local environment for the simulation. Results for a given simulation are gamma-ray, neutron, and combined flux spectra, whole-body effective dose for humans, and absorbed dose in silicon for electronics. This work has been benchmarked against measurements of existing RPS units and has been determined to predict neutron and gamma flux, absorbed dose, and dose equivalent within 50% of simulation uncertainties.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1459307
• Resource Relation: Conference: IEEE Aerospace Conference - Big Sky, Montana, United States of America - 3/3/2018 10:00:00 AM-3/10/2018 10:00:00 AM
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English