March 2018

Conference Paper

Radioisotope Power System Dose Estimation Tool

By:
Smith, Michael B
Page Number:
TBD
Book Title:
Nuclear and Emerging Technologies for Space (NETS 2018)
Publication Date:
March 2018
Conference Name:
ANS NETS 2018 - Nuclear and Emerging Technologies for Space
Conference Location:
Las Vegas, Nevada, United States of America
Conference Sponsor:
American Nuclear Society

Abstract

The Radioisotope Power System Dose Estimation Tool (RPS-DET) is used to create, perform and analyze particle-transport simulations of radioisotope power systems (RPS). RPS-DET consists of a Matlab graphical user interface (GUI) to generate and analyze Monte Carlo N-Particle (MCNP) 6 input and output files. Simulation geometries are created using a library-based method of combining multiple RPS units and environmental scenarios while source terms are produced from databases of time-dependent photon and neutron spectra generated by the software packages IsoChain and ORIGEN. Simulation results are saved in a three-dimensional format for neutron and photon flux and dose in tissue or silicon and may be interactively inspected via the GUI. RPS-DET allows flexibility in the simulation-space by providing the ability to mix-and-match RPS units with relevant environments along with capturing the effects of fuel-aging for the particle-energy-spectra and intensity. This work has been benchmarked against measurements of existing RPS units and found to comparably predict neutron and gamma flux, absorbed dose, and dose equivalent in humans and electronics (silicon).


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