Calculating sensitivities and uncertainties
Radiation transport and attenuation

Uncertainties resulting from the imprecision of the measurements used to determine effective cross-sections and other quantities add a margin of uncertainty to the results of protection calculations.

Let {x _k } be a set of basic quantities that we will call the parameters (k = 1, ... N ). A protection calculation gives the results R_j at different points in an accessible zone. The results R_j depend on the parameters x_k, which can be very numerous:

We introduce the notion of sensitivity S_j/k of the result R_j to the parameter x_k . This is the partial derivative of R_j:$S_{j\text{/}k}=\frac{\partial }{\partial x_k}{f}_j\left(x_1,\dots ,x_k,\dots x_N\right)$