Health Physics (eBook)

Radiation-Generating Devices, Characteristics, and Hazards

Joseph John Bevelacqua (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2016
Wiley-VCH (Verlag)
978-3-527-69434-1 (ISBN)

Infos

The book bridges the gap between existing health physics textbooks and reference material needed by a practicing health physicist as the 21st century progresses. This material necessarily encompasses emerging radiation-generating technologies, advances in existing technology, and applications of existing technology to new areas. The book is written for advanced undergraduate and graduate science and engineering courses. It is also be a useful reference for scientists and engineers.

Joseph John Bevelacqua, PhD, CHP, RRPT, is the President of Bevelacqua Resources, Richland, Washington, USA, a provider of radiation protection consulting services including study materials for the American Board of Health Physics Certfi cation Examination. A theoretical nuclear physicist by training, Dr. Bevelacqua is a Certified Health Physicist, Registered Radiation Protection Technologist, and Certified Senior Reactor Operator and has over 45 years of professional experience. This experience includes the medical, fuel cycle, accelerator, power reactor, environmental, and non-ionizing areas.

He was a key player in the Three Mile Island and Hanford cleanup activities, and is an active researcher with over 100 publications. His research areas include cancer therapy using heavy ions and microspheres, theoretical nuclear and high-energy physics, mathematical physics, and applied health physics. He recently received California University's Professional Excellence Award for his accomplishments.

Autor

Joseph John Bevelacqua, PhD, CHP, RRPT, is the President of Bevelacqua Resources, Richland, Washington, USA, a provider of radiation protection consulting services including study materials for the American Board of Health Physics Certi¬ cation Examination. A theoretical nuclear physicist by training, Dr. Bevelacqua is a Certi¬ ed Health Physicist, Registered Radiation Protection Technologist, and Certi¬ ed Senior Reactor Operator and has over 45 years of professional experience. This experience includes the medical, fuel cycle, accelerator, power reactor, environmental, and non-ionizing areas. He was a key player in the Three Mile Island and Hanford cleanup activities, and is an active researcher with over 100 publications. His research areas include cancer therapy using heavy ions and microspheres, theoretical nuclear and high-energy physics, mathematical physics, and applied health physics. He recently received California University?s Professional Excellence Award for his accomplishments.

Inhalt

OVERVIEW OF 21ST CENTURY HEALTH PHYSICS
Introduction to 21st Century Health Physics

NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE ISSUES
Nuclear Fuel Cycle

ACCIDENTS AND NUCLEAR EVENTS
Nuclear Accidents and Radiological Emergencies
Nuclear Terrorist Events Including INDs and RDDs

NUCLEAR MEDICINE AND PUBLIC HEALTH
Nuclear Medicine
Public Radiation Exposures and Associated Issues

REGULATORY ISSUES, LIMITATIONS, AND CHALLENGES
Regulatory Considerations
Solutions to Problems

APPENDICES
Selected Data on Radionuclides of Health Physics Interest
Production Equations in Health Physics
Key Health Physics Relationships
Internal Dosimetry
Health Physics Related Computer Codes
Systematics of Charged Particle Interactions with Matter
Angular Absorbed Dose Dependence of Heavy Ion Interactions
Basis for Radiation Protection Regulations

Textauszug

Chapter 1
Introduction to Twenty-First Century Health Physics

1.1 Overview of Twenty-First Century Health Physics

History has the unfortunate habit of repeating. Significant events of a given classification (e.g., accidents, natural disasters, and conflicts over natural resources) reoccur and are often influenced by available technology. For example, wars continue to be waged, but their scope and destructive power are amplified by technology. The development of nuclear technology and the fabrication of nuclear weapons continue to influence world events and health physics concerns as the twenty-first century unfolds.

1.2 Health Physics Issues, Challenges, and Opportunities

The twentieth-century power reactor accidents at Three Mile Island Unit 2 and Chernobyl Unit 4 revealed weaknesses in the management and regulation of nuclear reactors. Unfortunately, the nuclear accident hat trick was achieved in the twenty-first century with the accident involving Fukushima Daiichi Units 1, 2, 3, and 4. This most recent accident reveals additional structural weaknesses in nuclear regulation and management that involve fundamental licensing basis issues. The legacies of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl remain, and final cleanup actions for these sites either are delayed until facility decommissioning or are ongoing. The decade cleanup duration of Three Mile Island is dwarfed by the projected 40–100-year recovery effort for Fukushima Daiichi. Associated with these three accidents are issues involving environmental impacts, stakeholder concerns, regulatory changes, licensing impacts, and financial implications. These issues are addressed in this book and have a profound influence on health physics activities associated with these accidents and the subsequent expansion of nuclear power generation.

In a similar fashion, the terrorist attacks of the twentieth century culminated in the 11 September 2001 events involving the World Trade Center in New York and the US Pentagon. These attacks spawned significant concerns regarding the escalation of terrorist events to include a variety attacks including those utilizing radioactive materials and nuclear weapons. Technology has once again opened a door to an escalation of attack profiles that significantly affect the health physics profession.

The nuclear fuel cycle has successfully enriched uranium for reactor fuel and weapons production and reprocessed spent nuclear fuel to recover uranium and plutonium. Historically, the enrichment process required large facilities because diffusion and centrifuge technologies are relatively inefficient processes for uranium enrichment. The advent of advanced centrifuge technology and laser isotope separation makes the uranium enrichment step considerably more efficient and permits smaller facilities to be constructed and operated. These facilities are easier to conceal than the large centrifuge and gaseous diffusion plants. This presents the opportunity for a clandestine enrichment facility to produce weapons-grade uranium. Advanced technologies, particularly laser uranium enrichment, present a twenty-first-century nuclear proliferation concern.

In a similar manner, reprocessing technology has successfully recovered plutonium, and this technology is well known. The expansion of nuclear power facilities offers the possibility for the diversion of spent fuel that could be reprocessed and the recovered plutonium diverted toward weapons production or terrorist purposes.

On a more positive note, nuclear medicine has advanced and improved diagnostic and therapeutic techniques. The capability to localize the absorbed dose has improved, and additional radiation types are being utilized to target tumors. Proton and heavy ion therapy techniques are becoming more common, and the initial studies using antiprotons have been published. The use of nanotechnology and internal radiation-generating devices in cancer therapy applications is in development for the selective delivery of absorbed dose.

The advancement of nuclear medicine techniques increased the average absorbed dose delivered to the public. An increased use of nuclear materials in commercial products and their inadvertent entry into scrap metal used in consumer products offer additional challenges. Public concerns regarding the use of nuclear power generation and the effects of major accidents have been heightened by the Fukushima Daiichi accident and its sensationalism by the media and antinuclear groups.

Public interest and the involvement of stakeholder groups in nuclear licensing have also increased following the Fukushima Daiichi accident. Events involving radioactive materials and their associated media attention suggest that the interest of the public in radiation-generating technologies and radioactive materials will likely increase. The media presents a significant challenge because its perspective is often influenced more by emotion and sensationalism than scientific reasoning and knowledge.

Heightened public concern, media presentations that sensationalize events, increasing political pressure and influence, and active stakeholder involvement in nuclear projects suggest that the twenty-first-century regulatory environment will be dynamic and challenging. These elements affected the US fuel repository at Yucca Mountain and led to a temporary suspension of construction and operating licenses for new power reactors related to fuel storage environmental concerns and the associated legal issues. There has also been significant regulatory action following the Fukushima Daiichi accident that affects existing plants and those facilities under design and construction. The twenty-first century will likely offer a challenging health physics environment with considerable emphasis on postulated power reactor release scenarios, assumed accident severity, and the definition of credible design basis events.

The twentieth century saw a maturation of the health physics profession and its scientific basis, and the twenty-first century will require additional scientific training for health physics professionals to meet the significant challenges posed by advanced technologies. These challenges include continued debate over the fundamental regulatory assumption regarding the linear-nonthreshold (LNT) dose–response hypothesis, applicability of hormesis to the human species, evaluation of doses to reference plants and animals and their inclusion in environmental assessments and regulations, and the inclusion of occupational dosimetry and environmental doses into assessments of the biological effects of ionizing radiation.

National and international organizations continue to foster sustained development and standardization, but they run the risk of becoming decoupled from applied health physicists over issues such as the LNT hypothesis and environmental protection. Instrumentation advances will permit the enhanced detection of a variety of ionizing radiation types over a wide range of energies, and these detectors will find their incorporation into consumer products such as cell phones and enhance the detection of illicit nuclear materials.

Health Physics: Radiation-Generating Devices, Characteristics, and Hazards reviews emerging and maturing radiation-generating technologies that will affect the health physics profession. It is hoped that this review will foster additional research into these and supporting areas.

Health physics is a dynamic and vital field and has an exciting future. The topics addressed in this text encompass energy generation, medical applications, fuel cycle technologies, consumer applications, public exposures, and national defense. However, significant challenges will likely arise as new technologies expand the use of radioactive materials and radiation-generating devices, failures of existing technology occur, terrorist attacks expand to include radioactive materials or nuclear weapons, and old paradigms fall.

There is an intimate linkage between the health physics profession and the expansion of nuclear technology and nuclear-related events. This linkage will manifest itself in traditional fields and possibly in new areas including the response to public space tourism and nuclear terrorism. Communications with stakeholders and the public are essential to counter misinformation and hysteria that often accompanies media reports of nuclear-related events. The twenty-first-century health physicist must be technically capable and able to communicate information to the public in a commonsense manner that is understandable to a group with limited scientific knowledge. It will be an exciting time, but a time filled with challenges. The following areas are judged by the author to be representative of future health physics challenges, and these topics are further explored in this book:

• Generation IV fission power reactors
• Low earth orbit tourism by the public
• Advanced nuclear fuel cycles incorporating laser uranium enrichment and actinide transmutation
• Radiation therapy using heavy ions, exotic particles, internal radiation-generating devices, and antimatter
• Public radiation exposure
• Radioactive dispersal and improvised nuclear devices
• Nuclear accidents
• Evolving regulatory considerations

1.3 Forecast of Possible Future Issues

Table 1.1 summarizes a selected set of twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century events that are used to forecast events that may have health physics relevance. For example, the occurrence of the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl reactor accidents suggested that future accidents are likely and have...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.4.2016
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Physik / Astronomie
• Themenwelt: Technik
• Schlagworte: Bildgebende Verfahren i. d. Biomedizin • biomedical engineering • Biomedical Imaging • Biomedizintechnik • Biophysics • Biophysik • Hazard • <p>radiology • Medical & Health Physics • medical</p> • Medical Science • Medizin • Medizinische Physik • Physics • Physik • Physik in Medizin u. Gesundheitswesen • Radiation • Radiologie u. Bildgebende Verfahren • Radiology & Imaging • therapy
• ISBN-10: 3-527-69434-X / 352769434X
• ISBN-13: 978-3-527-69434-1 / 9783527694341