Assessment of the Effective Dose in Neutron-Irradiated Workplaces Within an Anthropomorphic Phantom

Evaluation of the radiological protection quantity E requires determining the dose deposited in different organs and tissues. This is why monitoring in exposed workplaces is ensured by dosimeters that are worn on the trunk and calibrated to measure the personal dose equivalent H_p(10) as an estimator of the effective dose E. However, the characteristics of the instrumentation and the definition of H_p(10) itself can result in significant differences between these two quantities. The Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety Laboratory of Dosimetry for Ionizing Radiation in France is currently developing an instrumented anthropomorphic dummy allowing the evaluation of the effective dose for photon irradiation fields. For neutron fields, a preliminary numerical study has been done. The calculations were made using a mathematical anthropomorphic phantom, and the transport of irradiating particles was calculated using the Monte Carlo code MCNPX. The numerical study has been validated, and the results of some standard irradiations and differences between the effective dose and its estimator have been calculated for various realistic workplace simulations.