Speaker
Description
Introduction:
Understanding how parameter variability influences occupational dose is essential for radiological protection during nuclear decommissioning. This study performs a detailed sensitivity and uncertainty analysis of the effective dose received by an Industrial‑Worker scenario at a decommissioned PWR facility, using RESRAD‑ONSITE as the computational dosimetry framework.
Methods:
The assessment considers external gamma exposure, inhalation of resuspended particles and incidental soil ingestion. Uncertain inputs include soil properties, radionuclide inventories, behavioral factors, and shielding configurations. Parameter uncertainty was propagated through Monte Carlo sampling to obtain probabilistic dose estimates.
Results:
In this scenario, the dominant exposure pathways are external radiation and direct contamination through soil ingestion. External gamma exposure is expected to drive most of the dose variability. Preliminary analyses indicate that resulting dose distributions remain below occupational limits, although they are sensitive to the outdoor exposure fraction. The study identifies the parameters that contribute most to dose variability for radionuclides typically encountered during the decommissioning of a nuclear power plant.
Conclusions:
RESRAD program provides a suitable framework for robust scenario analysis and uncertainty quantification. The results show the importance of conducting an uncertainty analysis on the parameters that affect the scenario studied. Findings support ALARA‑based optimization and monitoring strategies for industrial reuse of decommissioned nuclear sites.