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ANS > Publications > Journals > Nuclear Technology > Volume 140
Determination of Long-Lived Neutron Activation Products in Reactor Shielding Concrete Samples

Volume 140 · Number 1 · October 2002 · Pages 113-126
Technical Paper · Radioisotopes

Tomaz Zagar, Matjaz Ravnik

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The results of activation studies of TRIGA research reactor concrete shielding are given. Samples made of ordinary and barytes concrete were irradiated in the reactor to simulate neutron activation in the shielding concrete. Long-lived neutron-induced gamma-ray-emitting radioactive nuclides were measured in the samples with a high-purity germanium detector. The most active long-lived radioactive nuclides in the ordinary concrete samples were found to be 60Co and 152Eu. In the barytes concrete samples, the most active long-lived radioactive nuclides were 60Co, 133Ba, and 152Eu. Activation in the concrete was also calculated using the ORIGEN2 code and compared to experimental results. Simple radioactive nuclide generation and depletion calculation using one-group cross-section libraries provided together with the ORIGEN2 code did not give conservative results. Significant discrepancies were observed for some nuclides. For accurate long-lived radioactive nuclide generation in reactor shielding, material-specific cross-section libraries should be generated and verified by measurement.

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