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The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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Commercial nuclear innovation "new space" age
In early 2006, a start-up company launched a small rocket from a tiny island in the Pacific. It exploded, showering the island with debris. A year later, a second launch attempt sent a rocket to space but failed to make orbit, burning up in the atmosphere. Another year brought a third attempt—and a third failure. The following month, in September 2008, the company used the last of its funds to launch a fourth rocket. It reached orbit, making history as the first privately funded liquid-fueled rocket to do so.
Florent Martinetti, Laurent Donadille, Sabine Delacroix, Catherine Nauraye, Aurélien De Oliveira, Joël Herault, Isabelle Clairand
Nuclear Technology | Volume 168 | Number 3 | December 2009 | Pages 721-727
Proton Therapy | Special Issue on the 11th International Conference on Radiation Shielding and the 15th Topical Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Shielding Division (PART 3) / Radiation Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A9296
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A Monte Carlo modeling tool was applied at the Institut-Curie Centre de Protonthérapie d'Orsay, France, to simulate the passively scattered beam line used for treatment of ocular melanoma. The primary aim of this study is to validate the model for subsequent calculation of patient doses due to secondary neutrons.The Monte Carlo code MCNPX is used here to model the geometry of the beam line. The beam parameters at the entrance of the ophthalmologic beam line are not well known (beam emittance, lateral distribution, and energy spread). Hence, to accurately implement the beam source in the model, we need to calculate and measure these parameters in the first step of this study. Then, we perform comparisons between calculated and measured proton absorbed dose profiles under various scattering conditions.Comparisons between calculated and measured depth versus dose profiles show discrepancies <0.6 mm (range) and <1.1 mm (beam size and penumbra) for the lateral dose profiles. Hence, calculated relative dose profiles are considered to be correctly described by the Monte Carlo model. Some improvements are still needed to reproduce absolute dose profiles. This study should lead to the use of the numerical model for radiation protection applications.