NORM concentration determination in common materials in an urban environment

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Abstract

A combination of measurement and simulation was used to determine the concentration of 40K and the radioactive nuclides in the uranium series and the thorium series in several materials at the FTIG MOUT site. The predicted concentrations are consistent with other published results, and they matched favorably with synthetic data generated with MCNP6 models using the determined NORM concentrations and estimates of the FTIG environment as described by available construction plans and using standard material assumptions. Future measurements will incorporate lessons learned from this study. More measurements will be made of the concrete intersections at the site. The methodology explained in this report will also be carried out on building materials in an effort to characterize NORM concentrations in these background sources. Other modeling and simulation work that should be conducted includes a robust sensitivity analysis in which the effects of small changes to the model (and measurement) system can be characterized to help bound the uncertainty on the final NORM concentration predictions.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)635-638
Number of pages4
JournalTransactions of the American Nuclear Society
Volume114
Issue number1
StatePublished - 2016
Event2016 Transactions of the American Nuclear Society Annual Meeting, ANS 2016 - New Orleans, United States
Duration: Jun 12 2016Jun 16 2016

Funding

The work was sponsored by the Enabling Capabilities for Nonproliferation and Arms Control (EC) Program Area (James Peltz, Program Manager) of the Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Research and Development, National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The authors would like to thank the team of experimentalists who helped in taking the HPGe measurements. From ORNL, this includes Daniel E. Archer, Steven L. Cleveland, Gregory G. Davidson, Irakli Garishvili, Donald E. Hornback, Catherine E. Romano, Justin M. VonMoss, and Michael J. Willis. From RSL, this includes Henry L. Adams, Sarah E. Bender, D. Andre Butler, Joshua C. Jahn, M. S. Lance McLean, and L. Jason Moore. James Peltz from NNSA also participated in taking measurements. This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under Contract No. DE-AC0500OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for the United States Government purposes. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/ downloads/doe-public-access-plan).

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