Dr. Vince Jodoin
Group Leader, Nuclear Security Modeling
Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Abstract

The talk will review the application of DELFIC to the National Technical Nuclear Forensics interagency ground sample collection team. The collection team needed a fast running, portable mission planning tool to allow them to robustly respond to emerging nuclear device post-detonation situations. DELFIC is a validated, physics-based, research reference, fallout prediction software package. It has been implemented into the Fallout Planning Tool and is used to predict the expected isotope concentration of fallout, particle sizes, fractionation ratios, dose rate and integrated dose over the planned collection routes—information vital to ensure quality samples for nuclear forensic analysis while predicting dose to the sample collectors. DELFIC includes dynamic cloud rise, diffusive transport, and output processor modules. It also contains a particle activity module which models the radiochemical fractionation of the condensing elements in the cooling fireball into and onto particles to predict the activity size distribution for a given scenario. DELFIC’s cloud rise module produces a definition of the stabilized cloud which accounts for particle settling and advection during cloud rise which causes a physical fractionation of the particles. The use of Google Maps and Google Earth with the DELFIC Fallout Planning Tool provides a familiar, user-friendly interface for mission planning and visualization.

Biography

Dr. Vince Jodoin is currently the Group Leader of the Nuclear Security Modeling Group in the Nuclear Security and Isotope Technology Division at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Dr. Jodoin leads a team of engineers and scientists who create focused tools and provide detailed analysis and solutions on emerging, difficult radiological questions using state-of-the-art modeling and simulation. He has been at ORNL since 2005 after retiring from a 20 year career in the United States Air Force (USAF) as a professional military nuclear engineer, scientist, professor, research manager, and multiple program area division chief. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Nuclear Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1985, a Master of Science (MS) degree in Electrical Engineering from California State University in 1988, and both an MS and doctorate degree in Nuclear Engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) in 1989 and 1994, respectively. He is experienced in the physics of nuclear weapons, effects of nuclear weapons, nuclear treaty monitoring, analysis of environmental samples, proliferation of nuclear weapons, teaching general physics & nuclear engineering, and directing national security research. While in the USAF he had an assignment with the Strategic Air Command and two assignments with the Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC) and teaching assignments at both the USAF Academy as well as AFIT.

After joining ORNL’s Reactor Analysis Group in 2005, he created a multidisciplinary fallout research program at ORNL that capitalized on existing reactor-based source term modeling expertise. It included research on the physical, chemical, and radiological properties of fallout. He developed methods to predict the fission product, actinide, and activation products following a nuclear burst. In 2009, he was instrumental in the creation of a new research and development group focused on nuclear security modeling. He proposes and conducts research on nuclear weapon fallout and forensics, radionuclide fractionation, and prediction of radiological source terms. He led the development of a software tool for those collecting nuclear debris samples from urban detonations. ORNL’s fallout research program has supported the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, The Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies during this period.