Activation Measures on a Linear Accelerator Used In a Hospital Setting.

24 Pages

Description: An important application of linear electron accelerators (LINAC) is certainly their use in the health field for the treatment of cancer diseases. These accelerators emit electron and/or X-ray beams that are directed towards cancer cells to destroy them. Medical LINAC can use particles accelerated to energies much higher than the 10 Mega electron volts (MeV)energy threshold beyond which it is possible to induceradioactivity inthe metals affected bythe particles (2). Over the hundreds of hours of operation of a medical LINAC it is therefore possible that some of its parts undergo phenomenal activation, due to photo-neutron reactions, which lead to the formation of radioactive isotopes. Some of these radionuclides have a short average life and disappear after a few hours or days from the end of irradiation but others have, instead, average lives of a few months or years and remain radioactive for a long time after the shutdown of linac.

Author: Pier Battista Finazzi