Publications by authors named "H Vincke"

Cyclotrons for the production of radiopharmaceuticals have become important tools in modern nuclear medicine. At the end of their lifecycles, such installations have to be dismantled and any activated materials must be treated according to the local radiation protection legislation. Using a simulation model, we have developed a non-destructive approach for the radiological characterization of components inside and around an IBA Cyclone 18/9 cyclotron.

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The upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider spare beam dumps (Target Dump External, TDE) and the autopsy of the old operational TDE required to perform several activities in a high-radiation environment posing significant radiation protection challenges due to the residual activation of the equipment. To ensure high safety standards and to respect the ALARA principle, these challenges were addressed using the advanced Monte Carlo techniques to predict the residual ambient dose equivalent rate and the radionuclide inventory at different steps of the interventions. The CERN HSE-RP group makes extensive use of the FLUKA and ActiWiz codes to produce accurate estimates.

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In the context of the so-called Long Shutdown 3 (2026-2028), the Large Hadron Collider will be upgraded to the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider, allowing for approximately five more instantaneous collisions. The upgrade, maintenance and decommissioning of equipment will be mainly performed in the experimental insertions of Points 1 and 5, requiring to perform multiple interventions in high-residual radiation environment. This poses complex radiological challenges that the CERN Radiation Protection group is called to address.

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The out-diffusion of radionuclides from activated material in case of a fire may represent a non-negligible contribution to the radiological source term of such an event. In order to assess the contribution of this phenomenon, a software package has been designed and implemented. In the present document we briefly introduce the numerical treatment used to tackle the problem prior to the explanation of the software's logic.

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The CERN-MEDICIS (MEDical Isotopes Collected from ISolde) facility has delivered its first radioactive ion beam at CERN (Switzerland) in December 2017 to support the research and development in nuclear medicine using non-conventional radionuclides. Since then, fourteen institutes, including CERN, have joined the collaboration to drive the scientific program of this unique installation and evaluate the needs of the community to improve the research in imaging, diagnostics, radiation therapy and personalized medicine. The facility has been built as an extension of the ISOLDE (Isotope Separator On Line DEvice) facility at CERN.

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