Radiation Protection Today - Winter 2022 Issue 4 | Page 10

What ’ s next for mobile robotics in radiation protection ?

Having spent the last two years using mobile robots to make data collection at both active and decommissioned nuclear sites safer , more accurate and more efficient , Createc has recently launched a new advancement in radiation measurement for mobile robots – N-Visage Explore . The NV-Explore system integrates seamlessly with robotic platforms
® such as Spot , for quick , cost effective and efficient non-expert deployment . Using the payload , workers can view gamma radiation remotely in real time , through the controller of the robot . This allows workers to have an instant view of risks and inform radiation protection plans immediately . At the same time , the system uses the Leica BLK Arc laser scanner to create a 3D model of the environment , which can be used to view the radiation hot spots within a safe digital environment . In November 2022 , this payload will be deployed to assist with radiation protection in three countries across three continents , on two decommissioned sites and one active site .
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Do you have a question relating to radiation protection ? Email RPToday @ srp-uk . org or post on the general discussion area on the SRP forums ( member access only ).
“ What is the most radioactive element ?” It depends on whether you mean specific activity ( which is a measure of the number of radioactive disintegration events occurring per second , per gramme ) or the most energetic ( i . e . potentially damaging ) radiations .
Elements with atomic numbers above 84 have no stable elements . Oganesson has the highest atomic number ( 118 ) and mass number ( 294 ) of all known

294 118Og

Oganesson
elements and was first synthesised in 2002 . With a radioactive half-life of less than a millisecond , it could be classed as the most radioactive . However it is not stable and does not exist in nature .
Out of all the isotopes , we might consider the actinides and their daughters to be the most radioactive . Here are a few specific activities :
Plutonium-239 Radium-228 Actinium-228 Polonium-210
0 2.3 x 10 GBq / g 4 1.0 x 10 GBq / g 7 8.4 x 10 GBq / g 5 1.7 x 10 GBq / g
Polonium is probably considered to be the most radioactive as it is also extremely toxic . Although it has a lower specific activity than actinium-228 , it emits a very energetic alpha particle and has a relatively short half-life of 138 days . The Lethal Dose ( LD 50) is considered to be in the region of 1 µ g . A single microgramme of polonium emits as many alphas as 5 grammes of radium !
Polonium-210 is emitted as part of the uranium-238 series decay chain .

210 84Po

SpaceX Falcon Polonium 9 Rocket
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