Evaluation of the contributions of ²³²Th and its progenies to the ingestion dose coefficients

Abstract

In International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) Publication 69, a dosimetric multcompactmental model for ²³²Th was proposed for possible application and testing its reliability in the estimation of dose to critical cells of the body. The present work employed this dosimetric model as proposed by the ICRP to estimate the ingestion dose coefficients to organs/tisues of the body using thorium/daughter hybrid method with serial transformation to accumulate nuclear transformation. This method made it possible to estimate the contributions of ²³²Th and its progenies to the ingestion dose coefficients. The results obtained revealed that the estimated ingestion dose coefficients compared very well with the ICRP values. Moreover, the alpha emitters in the thorium chain contributed more than 95% to the dose coefficients. It is also believed that the present effort has contributed to the validation of the ICRP model for possible application to similar radioelement.

Journal of the Nigerian Association of Mathematical Physics, Volume 15 (November, 2009), pp 179 - 188