This title appears in the Scientific Report :
2009
Please use the identifier:
http://hdl.handle.net/2128/3690 in citations.
Sicherheitstechnik im Wandel Nuklearer Systeme: Strahlenschutz bei Spallationsneutronenquellen und Transmutationsanlagen
Sicherheitstechnik im Wandel Nuklearer Systeme: Strahlenschutz bei Spallationsneutronenquellen und Transmutationsanlagen
Although radiation protection is only a small part in occupational safety physics, it is of high relevance. In practice this important role can be seen in the equal representation of radiation protection and occupational safety in the safety departments. In contrast to occupational safety, radiation...
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Personal Name(s): | Nünighoff, Kay (Corresponding author) |
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Contributing Institute: |
Nukleare Entsorgung; IEK-6 |
Imprint: |
Jülich
Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH Zentralbibliothek, Verlag
2009
|
Physical Description: |
VIII, 215 S. |
Dissertation Note: |
Univ. Wuppertal, Habil. 2009 |
ISBN: |
978-3-89336-578-4 |
Document Type: |
Internal Report |
Research Program: |
Nukleare Sicherheitsforschung |
Series Title: |
Schriften des Forschungszentrums Jülich : Energie & Umwelt / Energy & Environment
40 |
Link: |
OpenAccess |
Publikationsportal JuSER |
Although radiation protection is only a small part in occupational safety physics, it is of high relevance. In practice this important role can be seen in the equal representation of radiation protection and occupational safety in the safety departments. In contrast to occupational safety, radiation protection has not only to consider the effect of radiation on the employess, but furthermore the influence on people living in the vicinity of a nuclear facility. In thiy way, radiation protection joins together the fields of occupational safety and environmental protection. Taking into account the production of longliving radionuclides, radiation protection has to consider time periodes much longer than the operational phase of a facility. All this requires reliable safety analysis with a high predictive power. This opens the possibility to recognize radiological hazards during the design phase of a new project and the development of a safety concept. Radiological hazards during the operation of nuclear power plants are well known. The duties belonging to radiation protection can be considered as state of the technology and is regulated by various comprehensive bodies of legislation, laws, and standards. However, nuclear reactors have reached a technical limit according to the power density. Especially the cooling of the reactor core at much higher neutron fluxes is currently not feasable. To push the boundary towards higher neutron fluxes concepts based on spallation reactions have been discussed. Here neutrons are produced by bombarding a heavy metal target (e.g. mercury, tungsten, or tantalum) with high energetic protons. Up to now such facilities could not be realised because of the high power particle accelerators needed. Recent developments of the accelerator technology open the possibility of construction and operating proton accelerators in the MW region. This will be demonstrated by construction and commissioning of two MW spallation neutron sources, namely SNS (Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA) with a power of 1.4 MW and J-PARC (Japan) with 1 MW. The realisation of proton accelerators at this power level will open the way towards energy amplifiers, as proposed e.g. by Carlo Rubbia. Such a facility will not only produce eletric power. Furthermore longliving radionuclides can be transmutated into shortlived or even stable nuclids by neutron induced nuclear reactions. A mitigation of the problem of nuclear waste disposal. The above discussed developments prove that accelerators are not only constructed for research, moreover application of these technology becames state of the art. With the emergence of particle accelerators in the MW region, radiation protection is confronted with new kind of problems to be solved. Especially the higher kinetic energies of the primary beam particles requires modification and expansion of computer programs well known in nuclear engineering. In contrast to nuclear reactors with kinetic energies up to 2-3 MeV, in spallation reaction secondary particles up to the incident energy in the GeV region will be produced. Problems related to radiation protection have to be considered in an energy range three orders of magnitude higher than known from nuclear reactors. |