The European Working Group on Reactor Dosimetry
The European Working Group on Reactor Dosimetry (EWGRD) started around 1960, under the sponsorship of EURATOM, with members designated by the governments from each European Union (EU) laboratories working in the field of reactor physics and technology. The goal was to exchange directly experience and know-how in reactor dosimetry and connected programmes. The fields covered were the measurements of thermal and epithermal fluences and fluence rate, the measurement of fast neutron spectra and fluences of thermal and fast reactors, and later the measurement of fusion and spallation neutron spectra.
A major application of neutron dosimetry in fission reactors was and still is the monitoring of irradiation experiments. The knowledge of the neutron and gamma-ray fields and fluences as well as the temperature during irradiation, is necessary to understand and to assess the embrittlement of the structural materials.
Radiation damage units had to be introduced, i.e. dpa, flux > 1 MeV, or flux > 0.5 MeV, to correlate the life time of a material under radiation to the exposure dose.
Soon the need for normalisation was felt in order to guarantee that specific nuclear data was used, that measurements in different laboratories gave the same results (need for inter-calibration experiments and standards), and that results were expressed such that a comparison with results from other laboratories was possible. Specific topics were discussed in sub-groups resulting in final recommendations. These final recommendations were then discussed in plenary meetings and accepted as recommendations for European use.
A number of documents in different domains of the field were produced, e.g.:
The large programme on pressure vessel steel dosimetry, at which a large number of European laboratories participated, started at the first ASTM-EURATOM Symposium on Reactor Dosimetry that was organised in Petten in 1975. There was active participation from ASTM and with successful results which lead to a number of ASTM standards.
This programme has emphasised the importance of the collaboration between metallurgists, reactor operators and reactor physicists, theoretical as well as experimental researchers. The role of neutron and gamma dosimetry has been of major importance in this research programme. It has proven to be of major importance for the industrial application of pressure vessel steels and lifetime predictions under radiation.
The EWGRD is presently chaired by Jan Wagemans (SCK•CEN, Mol, Belgium).
Members of the EWGRD Programme Committee
||Amec Foster Wheeler, Barnwood
||CEA, St Paul lez Durance
||RRC KI, Moscow
The state of the art in all reactor dosimetry aspects such as techniques, calculations and adjustment methods, damage correlation, neutron data, etc., are fully reported in the proceedings of the International Symposium on Reactor Dosimetry series organised alternatively by EWGRD and ASTM:
|1975 Petten (EUROPE, The Netherlands)
|1977 Palo Alto (USA, California)
||NUREG CP 0004
|1979 Ispra (EUROPE, Italy)
|1982 Washington (USA, Maryland)
||NUREG CP 0029
|1984 Geestacht (EUROPE, Germany)
|1987 Jackson Hole (USA, Wyoming)
||ASTM STP 1001
|1990 Strasbourg (EUROPE, France)
|1993 Vail (USA, Colorado)
||ASTM STP 1228
|1996 Prague (EUROPE, Czech Republic)
||World Scientific ISBN 981-02-3346-9
|1999 Osaka (Japan)
||ASTM STP 1398
|2002 Brussels (EUROPE, Belgium)
||World Scientific ISBN 981-238-448-0
|2005 Gatlinburg (USA, TN)
||ASTM STP 1490
|2008 Akersloot (EUROPE, The Netherlands)
||World Scientific ISBN 981-4271-10-1
|2011 Bretton Woods (USA, NH)
||ASTM STP 1550
|2014 Aix en Provence (EUROPE, France)
||EPJ Web of Conferences volume 106 - 2016
- 11th International Symposium on Reactor Dosimetry, Brussels (Belgium), 18-23 August 2002.
- EWGRD-PC meeting, Budapest, Hungary, 31 March 2004.
- EWGRD-PC meeting, Brussels, Belgium, 9-10 September 2004.
- 12th International Symposium on Reactor Dosimetry, Gatlinburg (Tennessee, USA), 8-13 May 2005.
- EWGRD-PC meeting, Akersloot, The Netherlands, 12-13 November 2007.
- 13th International Symposium on Reactor Dosimetry, Akersloot (The Netherlands), 25-30 May 2008.
- EWGRD-PC meeting, Sofia, 13-15 October 2010.
- 14th International Symposium on Reactor Dosimetry, Bretton Woods (New Hampshire, USA), 22-27 May 2011.
- EWGRD-PC meeting, Sofia, Bulgaria, 14-15 October 2010.
- EWGRD-PC meeting, Aix en Provence, France, 10-12 October 2012.
- EWGRD-PC meeting, Prague, Czech Republic, 12-13 November 2013.
- 15th International Symposium on Reactor Dosimetry, Aix en Provence, France, 18-23 May 2014.
- EWGRD-PC meeting, Warsaw, Poland, 7-8 December 2015
- EWGRD-PC meeting, Knutsford, UK, 26-27 October 2016.
- 16th International Symposium on Reactor Dosimetry, Santa Fe (New Mexico, USA), 7-12 May 2017.
Last updated 20/02/2017