Generation of gamma-ray streaming kernels through cylindrical ducts via monte carlo method

Abstract

Since radiation streaming through penetrations is often the critical consideration in protection against exposure of personnel in a nuclear facility, it has been of great concern in radiation shielding design and analysis. Several methods have been developed and applied to the analysis of the radiation streaming in the past such as ray analysis method, single scattering method, albedo method, and Monte Carlo method. But they may be used for order-of-magnitude calculations and where sufficient margin is available, except for the Monte Carlo method which is accurate but requires a lot of computing time. This study developed a Monte Carlo method and constructed a data library of solutions using the Monte Carlo method for radiation streaming through a straight cylindrical duct in concrete walls of a broad, mono-directional, monoenergetic gamma-ray beam of unit intensity. The solution named as plane streaming kernel is the average dose rate at duct outlet and was evaluated for 20 source energies from 0 to 10 MeV, 36 source incident angles from 0 to 70 degrees, 5 duct radii from 10 to 30 cm, and 16 wall thicknesses from 0 to 100 cm. It was demonstrated that average dose rate due to an isotropic point source at arbitrary positions can be well approximated using the plane streaming kernel with acceptable error. Thus, the library of the plane streaming kernels can be used for the accurate and efficient analysis of radiation streaming through a straight cylindrical duct in concrete walls due to arbitrary distributions of gamma-ray sources.