Conveners
Nuclear Safety, Security and Applications
- Stephan Woodborne (iThemba LABS)
Nuclear technology presents both opportunities and challenges for countries seeking to meet their growing energy demands and advance scientific research. While nuclear technology offers the potential for clean, reliable, and sustainable power generation and advancements in various sectors, its deployment necessitates a robust framework for safety and security to mitigate potential risks. In...
The first step in a series of actions after installing new software and hardware in a Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) laboratory is the calibration of the spectrometer besides the characterization of the reactor’s irradiation channels. This must be done before any routine spectral analysis could be done using the k0-NAA Standardization Method. For the Nigeria Research Reactor-1 (NIRR-1)...
TOPAS, a Monte Carlo tool that wraps Geant4, is used to simulate the cobalt-60 teletherapy unit at iThemba LABS to decrease the experimental uncertainty of the radiation dosimetry for the gamma irradiation experiments conducted in the radiation biophysics division.
The Theratron teletherapy machine utilizes a cobalt-60 source emitting gamma rays with energies of 1.173 and 1.332 MeV. The...
The Portable African Neutron-Gamma Laboratory for Innovative Nuclear Science project has seen the characterization of a number of new detectors using reference radioactive gamma and neutron sources. These detectors will be used for two primary projects, namely as an upgrade to the existing mobile gamma-ray and neutron detection unit and as a two-stage Compton camera prototype for a...
