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Title: Development of autonomous gamma dose logger for environmental monitoring

Journal Article · · Review of Scientific Instruments
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3697697· OSTI ID:22072267
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  1. Radiological Safety Division, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research, Kalpakkam 603 102, Tamil Nadu (India)

Continuous monitoring and archiving of background radiation levels in and around the nuclear installation is essential and the data would be of immense use during analysis of any untoward incidents. A portable Geiger Muller detector based autonomous gamma dose logger (AGDL) for environmental monitoring is indigenously designed and developed. The system operations are controlled by microcontroller (AT89S52) and the main features of the system are software data acquisition, real time LCD display of radiation level, data archiving at removable compact flash card. The complete system operates on 12 V battery backed up by solar panel and hence the system is totally portable and ideal for field use. The system has been calibrated with Co-60 source (8.1 MBq) at various source-detector distances. The system is field tested and performance evaluation is carried out. This paper covers the design considerations of the hardware, software architecture of the system along with details of the front-end operation of the autonomous gamma dose logger and the data file formats. The data gathered during field testing and inter comparison with GammaTRACER are also presented in the paper. AGDL has shown excellent correlation with energy fluence monitor tuned to identify {sup 41}Ar, proving its utility for real-time plume tracking and source term estimation.

OSTI ID:
22072267
Journal Information:
Review of Scientific Instruments, Vol. 83, Issue 3; Other Information: (c) 2012 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0034-6748
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English