Availability of nuclear decay data in electronic form, including beta spectra not previously published.

The unabridged data used in preparing ICRP Publication 38 (1983) and a monograph of the Medical Internal Radiation Dose (MIRD) Committee (Weber et al. 1989) are now available in electronic form. The "ICRP38 collection" contains data on the energies and intensities of radiations emitted by 825 radionuclides (those in ICRP Publication 38 plus 13 from the MIRD monograph), and the "MIRD collection" contains data on 242 radionuclides. Each collection consists of a radiations data file and a beta spectra data file. The radiations data file contains the complete listing of the emitted radiations, their types, mean or unique energies, and absolute intensities for each radionuclide. The beta spectra file contains, for each beta-emitting radionuclide, the probability that a beta particle will be emitted with kinetic energies defined by a standard energy grid. Although summary information from the radiations data files has been published, neither the unabridged data nor the beta spectra have been published. These data files and a data extraction utility, which runs on a personal computer, are available from the Radiation Shielding Information Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Bremsstrahlung radiation dose in yttrium-90 therapy applications.

UNLABELLED: The bremsstrahlung component of the decay scheme of beta emitters has been traditionally ignored in internal dosimetry calculations. METHODS: We have estimated the radiation dose from the bremsstrahlung component of the decay scheme of 90Y as a function of distance from a point source in a liquid medium and to body organs from distributed sources of 90Y in the liver and spleen. RESULTS: These estimates agree with measurements of bremsstrahlung dose measured in a Rando phantom, and give an estimate of the importance of this contribution to the overall dosimetry. CONCLUSIONS: The bremsstrahlung radiation absorbed dose contribution from an organ to itself is very small compared to that from the beta dose, but the contribution to other organs is not always negligible, especially when large amounts of 90Y may be involved, as in therapy applications.