Registered Nuclear Safety Engineer flashcards
Registered Nuclear Safety Engineer · Build recall with a focused review session.
20 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.
- Activity
- The rate of nuclear transformations in a sample, distinguished from energy deposition in a person or a radiation protection dose quantity.
- Half-life
- The time over which the expected number of undecayed nuclei is halved under the stated radioactive-decay model.
- Decay constant
- The parameter relating a radioactive population to its expected transformation rate in an exponential decay model, with inverse-time units.
- Absorbed dose
- The energy deposited by ionizing radiation per unit mass, measured in gray and not identical to activity.
- Effective dose
- A radiation protection quantity combining relevant weighted tissue contributions, not a direct patient-specific prediction of an individual health outcome.
- Criticality
- The chain-reaction state in which successive neutron generations are sustained in balance, distinct from prompt criticality or an absence of heat.
- Neutron leakage
- The loss of neutrons across a system boundary, distinguished from neutron absorption inside the specified material or reactor model.
- Reactivity
- A measure related to departure from criticality, whose sign and numerical convention should be stated before comparisons or calculations.
- Delayed neutron
- A neutron emitted following decay of certain fission products, with an important role in the time response of reactor systems.
- Decay heat
- Heat generated by radioactive decay after operation, which does not disappear immediately when the chain reaction is shut down.
- Heat sink
- The receiving system or environment to which heat is ultimately transferred along the applicable removal path and boundary conditions.
- Defense in depth
- A layered safety approach involving prevention, control and mitigation, rather than reliance on one apparently reliable protective device.
- Redundancy
- Provision of additional components for a function, which does not by itself establish independence from common-cause failures.
- Diversity
- Use of differing principles or designs to reduce selected shared vulnerabilities, without guaranteeing that every dependency has disappeared.
- Common-cause failure
- Failure of multiple provisions because of a shared cause, which can defeat an analysis that assumes complete independence.
- Safety barrier
- A provision that helps prevent or limit radioactive material release, assessed with its actual function, condition and dependencies.
- Source term
- A specified description of radioactive material available for release or transport in an analysis, with its time and assumptions identified.
- Counting uncertainty
- Variation in observed radiation counts under the measurement model, distinguished from calibration, geometry and background-related systematic effects.
- Contamination
- Unwanted radioactive material on or within a person, object or environment, distinguished from irradiation without transferred material.
- Operating responsibility
- The facility operator responsibility for nuclear safety, which is not transferred to the regulator merely because inspection occurs.