The ANSWERS® Software Service Website
Radiation Shielding
ANSWERS supplies a range of Shielding Software, including:
MCBEND - A Monte Carlo program for general radiation transport.
MCBEND can be used for radiation transport problems in shield design, dosimetry and industrial applications. Users benefit from the ease of model specification and the efficiency of MCBEND's automatic acceleration techniques.
RANKERN - A Point-Kernel program for gamma ray transport solutions.
RANKERN's rapid calculation allows the user to fully explore design variations in order to optimise the shield design.
We have many years of experience relating to shield design and assessment work in a wide range of areas within the nuclear industry. This expertise has been successfully applied to solve a wide range of customer problems and to provide an authoritative peer review service.
Our assessment work on Reactor Plant includes:
- The determination of radiological dose-rates
- Nuclear Heating
- Reactor Pressure Vessel Fluence Assessment
- Radiation Damage to materials and instrument response in Magnox, AGR, PWR, Fast Reactor and Fusion Reactor systems.
Assessment experience for fuel cycle needs includes:
- The calculation of decay heating and activity of isotopes in spent fuel
- The design of charge machines
- Assessment and design of transport flasks
- Fuel storage facilities
- Re-processing plant
- Shielding of nuclear waste
Other work includes:
- Skyshine studies
- Decommissioning
- In-house experimental validation of calculational routes for the design of the shielding in AGR's, Sizewell B and the European Fast Reactor
- Design and Operational analyses of Food Irradiation Facilities
The major codes used for shielding consultancy are the Monte Carlo code MCBEND and the Point-Kernel code RANKERN. For the calculation of decay heating and isotope activity, the inventory code FISPIN is used.
In addition we have installed a range of international codes for performing independent analyses.