Software Directory & History; A Summary of the Computer Code Collections (CCC) Peripheral Shielding Routings (PSR) and Data Library Collection (DLC)

1 compact Disk. The Radiation Safety Information Computational Center (RSICC) is a U.S. Department of Energy Specialized Information Analysis Center (SIAC) authorized to collect, analyze, maintain, and distribute computer software and data sets in the areas of radiation transport and safety. The RSICC is operated by Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The primary sponsors of the RSICC are the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The center began as the Radiation Shielding Information Center (RSIC) in 1962, but was renamed to RSICC in August 1996 to better reflect the scope of computer code technology at the center (i.e., radiation transport and safety). The RSICC staff maintain an online software catalog at their website, which site visitors may browse (though no search functionality is provided). The software in the catalog cover a broad range of nuclear computational tools, providing in-depth coverage of radiation transport and safety topics for nuclear science and engineering, in support of modeling and simulation. Registered users may request software from the repository. With a few specific exceptions, a "cost recovery fee" is required to recoup the cost associated with RSICC operations before software requests are fulfilled. Almost any material can act as a shield from gamma or x-rays if used in sufficient amounts. Different types of ionizing radiation interact in different ways with shielding material. The effectiveness of shielding is dependent on the Stopping power of radiation particles, which varies with the type and energy of radiation and the shielding material used. Different shielding techniques are therefore used dependent on the application and the type and energy of the radiation.Shielding reduces the intensity of radiation depending on the thickness. This is an exponential relationship with gradually diminishing effect as equal slices of shielding material are added. A quantity known as the halving-thicknesses is used to calculate this. For example, a practical shield in a fallout shelter with ten halving-thicknesses of packed dirt, which is roughly 115 cm (3 ft 9 in) reduces gamma rays to 1/1024 of their original intensity (i.e. 1/210).The effectiveness of a shielding material in general increases with its atomic number, called Z, except for neutron shielding which is more readily shielded by the likes of neutron absorbers and moderators such as compounds of boron e.g. boric acid, cadmium, carbon and hydrogen respectively.…