Constructional requirements and classification of nucleonic gauges

There are several hundred of nucleonic gauges installed in at least 500 industrial facilities in Brazil. In recent years, several standards have been issued by different international committees in order to specify requirements for the design of nucleonic gauges taking into account issues related to radiological protection. The aspects of design and manufacturing of these devices using radioactive sources should be treated as an important feature to an adequate safety approach during the whole operational life, mainly taking into account the extreme conditions of the places where the devices are installed. Thus, the agreement with these standards should be included as part of the equipment specification to the licensing process, however, most nucleonic gauges were installed in the period prior to the issuance of these international standards. In this work was studied the performance of shielding design taking into account international standards concerning the constructional requirements and classification of gauges. In view of the specific operational conditions found at reference facilities, the measurements obtained will be used for validation of a Monte Carlo code based on GEANT4 to allow extrapolations for other operational conditions. The results obtained in this study can enable the establishment of a safety indicator tool to industrial facilities, taking into account different designs, so that this additional parameter can be used to determine and to optimize the frequency of regulatory inspections. (author)