United States Navy Nuclear Accident Dosimetry Program: History and Current Status

Published

June 15, 2024

Author(s)

Alexander Romanyukha, Jessica Saunders, David Boozer, Keith Consani, Jeff Delzer

Abstract

United States Code of Federal Regulations 10, § 835.1304 requires that installations possessing sufficient quantities of fissile material to potentially constitute a critical mass, such that the excessive exposure of individuals to radiation from a nuclear accident is possible, shall provide nuclear accident dosimetry for those individuals. American National Standard ANSl/HPS N13.3-2013 Dosimetry for Criticality Accidents provides technical, quality assurance, and performance requirements for nuclear accident dosimeters (NAD). In 2023 U.S. Navy operated 82 nuclear-powered ships (11 aircraft carriers, 71 submarines – 18 SSBN/SSGN, 53 SSN) with total number of 94 reactors. Since 1968 U.S. Navy has used fixed nuclear accident dosimeters (FNAD) mounted to the bulkheads surrounding naval nuclear propulsion reactors. Since 1968 the US Navy has used two nuclear accident criticality dosimeters. The first Navy accident dosimeter DT-518/PD was introduced in 1968. It was developed by the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory in San Francisco, California under leadership of Eugene Tochilin. This dosimeter contains two indium foils for quick dose assessments using shipboard gamma instruments available on nuclear powered vessels and two sulfur pellets/LiF TLD-700 powder for final dose determination at the Naval Dosimetry Center. The newest Navy NAD is the DT-723/PD, which contains indium foil, gold foil, cadmium shielded gold foil, sulfur pellet and a LiF TLD-700 chip. This paper provides a brief description of the measurement procedures, results of the testing of both NADs and comparison of their performance.

Citation

Radiation Measurements

Volume

176

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.radmeas.2024.107205

Local Download

Keywords

Nuclear Accident dosimetry, neutron dosimetry, Navy neutron dosimetry, NAD, PNAD, FNAD, Accident dosimetry, Neutron dosimeter, Dosimeter.

Citation

Romanyukha, A. , Saunders, J. , Boozer, D. , Consani, K. and Delzer, J. (2024), United States Navy Nuclear Accident Dosimetry Program: History and Current Status, Radiation Measurements, [online], https://doi.org/10.1016/j.radmeas.2024.107205, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=957214 (Accessed December 11, 2024)