Monitoring airborne alpha-emitter contamination

Technical Report · Sun Feb 01 00:00:00 EST 1998

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/645464· OSTI ID:645464

Kerr, P L; Koster, J E; Conaway, J G; Bounds, J A; Whitley, C W ^[1]; Steadman, P A ^[2]

---

1. Los Alamos National Lab., NM (United States)
2. National Center for Genome Resources, Santa Fe, NM (United States)

Facilities that may produce airborne alpha emitter contamination require a continuous air monitoring (CAM) system. However, these traditional CAMs have difficulty in environments with large quantities of non-radioactive particulates such as dust and salt. Los Alamos has developed an airborne plutonium sensor (APS) for the REBOUND experiment at the Nevada Test Site which detects alpha contamination directly in the air, and so is less vulnerable to the problems associated with counting activity on a filter. In addition, radon compensation is built into the detector by the use of two measurement chambers.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Assistant Secretary for Management and Administration, Washington, DC (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-36
• OSTI ID: 645464
• Report Number(s): LA-UR-97-4609; CONF-971147-; ON: DE98003302; TRN: 98:009968
• Resource Relation: Conference: Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) nuclear science symposium and medical imaging conference, Albuquerque, NM (United States), 11-13 Nov 1997; Other Information: PBD: Feb 1998
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
RADIATION MONITORING
AIR POLLUTION MONITORING
ALPHA DETECTION
PLUTONIUM
IONIZATION CHAMBERS
DESIGN
EXPERIMENTAL DATA