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A year in orbit: ISS deployment tests radiation detectors for future space missions
The predawn darkness on a cool Florida night was shattered by the ignition of nine Merlin engines on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The thrust of the engines shook the ground miles away. From a distance, the rocket appeared to slowly rise above the horizon. For the cargo onboard, the launch was anything but gentle, as the ignition of liquid oxygen generated more than 1.5 million pounds of force. After the rocket had been out of sight for several minutes, the booster dramatically returned to Earth with several sonic booms in a captivating show of engineering designed to make space travel less expensive and more sustainable.
Antti Räty, Merja Tanhua-Tyrkkö, Petri Kotiluoto, Tommi Kekki
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 196 | Number 6 | June 2022 | Pages 735-750
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2021.2011671
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
FiR 1 is a TRIGA Mark II-type research reactor in Finland. It was in operation between 1962 to 2015 and will be dismantled in 2022 to 2023. Preliminary calculations of the activities in the reactor main structures were performed in an earlier stage of the decommissioning project. Samples of the activated parts of the reactor biological shield concrete were drilled in December 2018 to validate these estimates. This paper describes the calculations and gamma activity measurements performed for the activated concrete samples to determine the boundary between radioactive parts and concrete that can plausibly be free-released from regulatory control. The activities have been estimated with a two-step calculation process using the MCNP and ORIGEN-S calculation codes and measurements using an ISOCS gamma spectrometer with a high-purity germanium detector.