RANKERN - Radiation Shielding
and Dosimetry

The RANKERN package assists users with gamma radiation transport problems in shield design, dosimetry and industrial applications.

The Software

The RANKERN code provides a rapid method for the design and assessment of gammaray shielding and dosimetry. RANKERN is suitable for determining dose-rates through shield materials, in ducts and labyrinths and from skyshine and has a wide-range of applications within the nuclear power industry and other market sectors.

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RANKERN utilises the point-kernel technique coupled with build up factors to correct the un-collided flux for the contribution due to scattering. The code uses a powerful and flexible threedimensional geometry modelling package to enable even complicated geometry systems to be described with minimum effort, or imported directly from CAD files (evaluation feature). The same geometry package is used in the MONK and MCBEND codes, allowing easy transfer between them.

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RANKERN can also model any number of source bodies with different shapes, dimensions, orientations and spectra, within a single calculation. The integration of the point-kernel over the spatial distribution of the source is carried out using a stochastic integration method, which employs an automatic technique for adjusting the source importance function. Another benefit is RANKERN’s ability to treat penetration paths involving multiple flight scatter or reflection events.

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The code has a series of self-contained libraries; these include: a gamma-ray cross section data library for all elements, a set of cross section data for standard materials, libraries of Taylor form polynomial buildup factors and ANS643 build-up factors for common materials, an albedo data library and 22 and 180 energy group activation and fission product gamma-ray source libraries. For multi-layered shields, buildup factors can also be calculated ‘on the fly’, using diffusion theory.