Identifying radiologically important ESS-specific radionuclides and relevant detection methods

The European Spallation Source (ESS) is under construction in the outskirts of Lund in southern Sweden. When ESS has entered the operational phase in a few years, an intense beam of high-energy protons will not only produce the desired spallation neutrons from a large target of tungsten, but a substantial number of different radioactive by-products will also be generated. A small part of these will be released to the environment during normal operation. During an accident scenario, a wide range of gases and aerosols may be released from the tungsten target. The palette of radionuclides generated in the ESS target will differ from that of e.g. medical cyclotrons or nuclear power plants, thus presenting new challenges e.g. in the required environmental monitoring to ensure that dose limits to the public are not exceeded. This project (SSM2018-1636), financed by the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority (SSM), aimed to strengthen competence at Lund University for measurement and analysis of ESS-specific radionuclides. First, an extensive literature review, including modelling as well as experimental analyses, of ESS-relevant radionuclides was performed. We found that radionuclide production in particle accelerators is well-known, while experience with tungsten targets is very limited. As a second part of the project, an independent simplified model of the ESS target sector for the calculations of radionuclide production in the ESS tungsten target was developed using the FLUKA code. We conclude that we have a fairly good agreement with results of other authors, except for 148Gd, and that the calculated radionuclide composition is sensitive to the nuclear interaction models used.In the third part of the project, known environmental measurement technologies for various ESS-relevant radionuclides were reviewed, focussing on pure difficult-to-measure alpha- and beta-emitters. Liquid scintillation counting (LSC) is a suitable technique e.g. for the important beta emitters 3H, 1