In nuclear power plant environments, the analysis of gamma-emitting waste materials with complex shapes can be challenging. ISOCS (In-Situ Objective Counting System) is employed to measure the gamma-emitting radionuclide concentrations. However, it is crucial to validate the accuracy of ISOCS measurements. This study aims to validate the accuracy of ISOCS measurement results for spent filters. The ISOCS measurement process begins with modeling and efficiency calculations of the target spent filters using ISOCS software. ISOCS offers the advantage of direct measurement assessment by incorporating shielding materials and collimators into the detector efficiency calculation during the modeling process, without the need for separate efficiency correction sources. To validate the accuracy of ISOCS measurement results, the measured radioactivity values were used as input data for the MicroShield computer code to derive dose rates. These dose rates were then compared to the dose rates measured on-site, confirming the reliability of ISOCS measurements. In the field, ISOCS gamma measurements and surface dose rates were measured for three Cavity filters and four RCP Seal Injection filters. The measured dose rate for the Cavity filters was around 270 Svhr, and the computed values using MicroShield showed an error of approximately 12%. Despite modeling and calculation errors in computer analysis and potential uncertainties in the measurement environment and instrument, the computed values closely matched the measured values. However, the measured dose rate for the RCP Seal Injection filters ranged 2.9~8 Svhr, which is very low and close to background levels. When compared to the results of computer analysis, an error ranging from 27% to 97% was observed. It is concluded that validating the accuracy in the low dose rate range close to background levels is challenging through a comparison of calculated and measured dose rates.

RUCAS (Recycling-Underlying Computational Dose Assessment System), a dose assessment program based on the RESRAD-RECYCLE framework, is designed to evaluate dose for recycling scenarios of radioactive waste in metals and concrete. To confirm the validity of the recycling scenarios provided by RUCAS, comparative evaluations will be conducted with RESRAD-RECYCLE for metal radioactive waste recycling scenarios and with MicroShield® for concrete radioactive waste recycling scenarios. In the evaluation of metal recycling scenarios without shielding, RUCAS showed similar results when compared to both MicroShield® and RESRAD-RECYCLE. This validates the function of dose assessments using RUCAS for metal recycling scenarios. However, when shielding was present, RUCAS produced results that were comparable to MicroShield®, but differed from those of RESRAD-RECYCLE. The underestimation of dose values up to 1.66E+08 times difference by RESRAD-RECYCLE could potentially decrease reliability and safety in evaluated doses, further emphasizing the importance of RUCAS. Because validation is also necessary for the expanded calculation capabilities resulting from methodological changes of RUCAS (i.e., various radiation source geometries), based on prior validations, it was determined that additional validations are required for different radiation source materials and shielding conditions. In case where the radiation source and shielding materials were identical, RUCAS and MicroShield® produced similar results according to both the Kalos et al. (1974) and Lin and Jiang (1996) methodologies. This demonstrates that the that differences in methodology are inconsequential when considering the same source and shielding materials. However, when the atomic number of the radiation source materials was larger than that of shielding material (HZ-LZ condition), RUCAS obtained results similar to MicroShield® only for the Kalos et al. (1974) methodology. While Lin and Jiang (1996) methodology yield higher results than MicroShield®. Lastly, in case where the atomic number of the radiation source material was smaller than that of the shielding material (LZ-HZ condition,) both methodologies yielded results comparable to MicroShield®. In conclusion, the validity of RUCAS’s shielding calculations has been verified, confirming improvements in dose assessment compared to RESRAD-RECYCLE. Additionally, we observed that shielding effectiveness calculations differ depending on the methodology of build-up effect. If the validity of these methodologies is confirmed, it is expected that selecting the most advantageous methodology for each condition will enable more rational dose assessments. Consequently, in future research, we plan to evaluate the validity of Lin and Jiang (1996) methodology using particle transport codes based on the Monte Carlo method, such as MCNP and Geant 4, rather than MicroShield®.