Pathfinding in radioactive environment : using Java

Today many people work in radioactive environments, like in nuclear power plants and areas for storing spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste. Humans cannot perceive radioactivity, so to increase our awareness and avoid danger we need tools and devices for these purposes. IFE (Institute for Energy Technology), the Company that ordered this project, have a section that develops software to visualize, plan and simulate activities in such conditions. This paper describes the implementation of a tool to find the way from Node A to Node B in a graph that exposes the worker to a minimal radiation dose, a task that can be difficult to do by hand. The programming language used for this project was JAVA. The program uses a radiation calculator written by IFE, to get radiation levels in the area. The algorithm for the search is a Uniform Cost Search that guaranties the safest way in the graph. The GUI can draw the solution, and eases debug, testing and validating the algorithm. The code works and IFE approved the project and will evaluate if they are going to use it in their products