Virtual reality for operational procedures in radioactive waste deposits

Highlights: • A virtual simulator were developed to represent the IEN/CNEN radioactive waste deposit. • A model was developed to estimate radiation rate. • The model takes into account the radiation shielding effects. • The radiation model was implemented in the virtual simulator with good results. - Abstract: One of the biggest challenges in the nuclear area are still nuclear radioactive waste generated in the various applications of this energy, all these wastes are stored in tanks that are frequently monitored and restructured to better utilization of the same. Considering the routine process of this work and due to the seriousness of the issue, are very useful methods and techniques to predict the radiation dose absorbed by the worker in performing this task. One of the possible ways to accomplish advance planning of these activities is through the use of computer simulators. In this context, this paper presents a methodology based on virtual reality, in order to develop a radioactive waste virtual deposit in order to enable simulations of virtual relocation in these deposits. With the development of deposit becomes possible to simulate virtual/train allocation and reallocation of low and medium level waste materials, since the possibility of displacement for virtual objects and dynamic calculation of the radiation rate in this environment. Through virtual simulations is possible to know the dose accumulated by virtual person in procedures performed in the virtual environment, since each virtual object in the tank is a source of radiation. As a first case study was modeled virtually the nuclear waste repository located at the Instituto de Engenharia Nuclear – IEN/CNEN. This first model was evaluated according to the realism of the environment and computational radiation modeling. The results for the modeling of the virtual environment and the modeling of radiation, proved satisfactory, as the good approach to be compared with the real environment. Therefore this research contributes to show the great potential of virtual simulation tools in the training operation of nuclear facilities, avoiding physical immersion in higher levels radiation.