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Task force charts growing interest in civilian maritime nuclear applications
Readers of Nuclear News will have heard of historical applications of civilian maritime nuclear power, like the merchant ship NS Savannah and the USS Sturgis floating power plant. With a few exceptions there has been little action in this area for over 50 years, and there are plenty of reasons and opinions as to why, but over the last few years the dramatic increase in interest from the maritime industry and its stakeholders has been undeniable.
Katsumi Hayashi, Hideo Hirayama, Kohei Iwanaga, Kenjiro Kondo, Seishiro Suzuki
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 198 | Number 2 | February 2024 | Pages 207-227
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2023.2204974
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The pinhole gamma camera is a simple and useful device for determining the radiation distribution in a certain region. Using this device, we developed a method to measure the distribution of 137Cs contamination density on surfaces using the total energy absorption peak count rate of gamma rays, where each camera pixel was projected onto the surface to determine the corresponding measured area and distance to the surface. We applied this method to measure the 137Cs contamination density of the wall, ceiling, and floor of the Unit 2 Operation Floor at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in 2020 and 2022 and compared the results obtained in 2020 to those of a robot-operated, conventional, high-dose-area smear test. We found a pinhole gamma camera with the proposed method is useful for obtaining contamination density distribution results quickly, without the complexities of using a robot.