1. NAME AND TITLE

ALDOSE: Dose Calculation for Alpha Disc Source

2. CONTRIBUTOR

Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

3. CODING LANGUAGE AND COMPUTER

Fortran 77; VAX, Data General MV/family, IBM PC, IBM PC/XT, IBM PC/AT.

4. NATURE OF PROBLEM SOLVED

ALDOSE calculates the absorbed dose rate, dose-rate equivalent rate, and dose-weighted LET as functions of depth in water irradiated by a uniform alpha disk source. In addition, the average LET and average quality factor for the irradiated water are computed. The source may have a layer of gold, and may be separated from the water by a layer of Mylar. The source may have up to 12 source energies up to 15 MeV. Output data are tabulated as histograms and graphs in files which can be accessed by the user for further processing.

5. METHOD OF SOLUTION

Calculations are based on range-energy tables for alpha rays in gold, Mylar, and water and employ ray tracing. Quality factors are based on ICRP Publication 26. The average LET in a subslab is used to assign a quality factor for the dose that the alpha particle delivers there.

6. RESTRICTIONS OR LIMITATIONS

Three materials, 12 energies, up to 15 MeV, slab geometry.

7. TYPICAL RUNNING TIME

The sample problem requires 2.42 minutes on a MicroVax II; 9 minutes on Data General MV/4000; 0.25 minutes on a VAX 6000; 47 minutes on an IBM PC (4 MHz).

8. COMPUTER HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS

ALDOSE runs on the IBM PC and compatibles with a math coprocessor. It was developed on a MicroVax II and tested on a VAX 6000 (VMS) and Data General MV/4000 (AOS/VS).

9. COMPUTER SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

The code was written Fortran 77. Calls for system date and time and OPEN statements must be tailored for each system. The source code contains the necessary statements; the ones not needed are ``Commented out.'' The code was compiled and linked on the IBM PC with Microsoft Version 5.0.

10. REFERENCE

T. E. Huston and J. E. Turner, A User's Manual for ALDOSE: A Computer Code for Calculating Absorbed-Dose Rate, Dose-Equivalent Rate, and Dose-Weighted LET as Functions of Depth in Water Irradiated by an Alpha Disc Source, ORNL/TM-11618, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Aug. 1990).

J. E. Turner and T. E. Huston, ``ALDOSE: A Computer Code to Calculate Absorbed-Dose Rate, Dose-Equivalent Rate, and Dose-Weighted LET As Functions of Depth in Water Irradiated by an Alpha-Particle Disc Source,'' Health Physics Vol. 60, No. 4 pp. 581-585 (April 1991).

11. CONTENTS OF CODE PACKAGE

Included are the referenced document and one DS/DD 5.25-inch diskette (360 K) which includes the source program, data files, sample problem input and output, and the executable program necessary to run ALDOSE on a PC. The VAX version of the source program is also included.

12. DATE OF ABSTRACT

December 1990, revised April 1991.