Estimativa dosimétrica de trabalhadores envolvidos na exploração de petróleo: abordagem utilizando o método Monte Carlo

Abstract

Oil is a fundamental commodity for society. Its by-products are part of the lives of billions every day, from the burning of fossil fuels to their applications in the pharmaceutical industry, for example. It played a key role in the second industrial revolution, becoming the main source of energy for industry. Despite its importance, it has become known by the scientific community that its exploration might be accompanied by radiological risk to those involved in its extraction. The issue gained international notoriety after the publication of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which warned about the accumulation of naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) in surface exploration sites and the emission of ionizing radiation associated with these radionuclides’ disintegration. The objective of this work is to quantify the workers exposure to ionizing radiation during oil exploration in terrestrial sites. To this end, it is intended to use a simulation method with random evolution, known as the Monte Carlos method, and thus experiment with exposure levels in humans in a computational representation. The simulated scenarios demonstrated that there is a distinct radiosensitivity between genres given as configurations of each simulation. It was calculated a set of conversion factors for an equivalent and effective dose for workers. The most irradiated organs were the bone marrow and the skin. The most critical scenario involves NORM present in the sludge, whose CF result for effective dose was 1.4 Sv/Gy for 40K