Radiation Protection Study for the First Korea Heavy-Ion Medical Accelerator Facility

Because of the encouraging results obtained at worldwide heavy-ion therapy facilities, the first hospital-based heavy-ion accelerator therapy facility is under construction in Busan, Korea, at the Korea Institute of Radiological and Medical Sciences. The compact accelerator will deliver beams of heavy ions, specifically carbon ions of energy 430 MeV/u. This study focuses on radiation protection aspects concerning materials activation and facility shielding. Radiation shielding was evaluated with two different Monte Carlo codes (MCNPX and FLUKA), and materials activation studies were performed using FLUKA and a combination of MCNPX+CINDER’90 codes.