Advanced methodologies of evaluating the radiation sources and ionising radiation shieldings for reducing the irradiation in nuclear field personnel

One of the technical measures of protection against ionizing radiations is the radiation shielding. The process of implementing modern and efficient methods of evaluating the radiation shielding implies advanced calculation methods. That means using from simpler 1-D or 2-D computing codes such as MicroShield or QAD up to systems of codes such as SCALE (containing several independent modules) or the Monte Carlo multipurpose and many particles, MCNP, transport code. The main objective of this work is to present the Monte Carlo based evaluation of the dose rates from the CANDU type spent fuel all along the path of its handling up to intermediate storage. These values will be then compared with the values obtained from calculations with different computing programs. To obtain this objective two problems were approached: - establishing geometrical models according to the definition used by MCNP code so that the characteristics of CANDU type nuclear fuel are taking into account; - checking the validity of the proposed models by comparing the MCNP results with those obtained with other computing codes specific for shielding evaluation and radiation dose calculation