Object-oriented process dose modeling for glove-box operations

Journal Article · Thu Jul 01 04:00:00 EDT 1999 · Transactions of the American Nuclear Society

OSTI ID:20005819

Boerigter, S T; Fasel, J H; Kornreich, D E

The Plutonium Facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) supports several defense- and non-defense-related missions for the country by performing fabrication, surveillance, and research and development for materials and components that contain plutonium. Most operations occur in rooms with one or more arrays of glove boxes connected to each other via trolley glove boxes. Each room may contain glove boxes dedicated to several different operations or functions. Minimizing the effective dose equivalent (EDE) is a growing concern as a result of steadily allowable dose limits being imposed and a growing general awareness of safety in the workplace. In general, the authors discriminate three components of a worker's total EDE: the primary EDE, the secondary EDE, and background EDE. The immediate sources to which a worker is exposed provide the primary EDE. The secondary EDE results from operations and sources in the same vicinity or room as the worker. The background EDE results from all other sources of radiation, such as natural sources and sources outside of the room. A particular background source of interest is the nuclear materials vault. The distinction between sources inside and outside of a particular room is arbitrary with the underlying assumption that building walls and floors provide significant shielding to justify including sources in other rooms in the background category. An associated paper details the tool that they use to determine the primary and secondary EDEs for all processes of interest in a room containing glove boxes.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Lab., NM (US)
• OSTI ID: 20005819
• Journal Information: Transactions of the American Nuclear Society, Journal Name: Transactions of the American Nuclear Society Vol. 81; ISSN 0003-018X; ISSN TANSAO
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

05 NUCLEAR FUELS
56 BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
APPLIED STUDIES
DOSE EQUIVALENTS
GLOVEBOXES
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
NUCLEAR FACILITIES
OCCUPATIONAL EXPOSURE
RADIATION DOSES
RADIATION PROTECTION