Semiautomated monitoring of glovebox work stations for radiation hazards

The Los Alamos Plutonium Facility handles kilogram quantities of plutonium, americium, and other radioactive materials for a variety of research and development, metal fabrication, and scrap recovery operations. These diverse operations are conducted in full contained and partially shielded glovebox enclosures. A major effort is made to minimize radiation exposures of workers. The accomplishment of this effort requires periodic radiation surveys of work areas to identify potential problem locations at which dose reduction efforts should be expended. To this end, approximately 5000 radiation dose-rate measurements are taken at the glovebox work stations each month. After evaluation for potential problem locations the data are filed in historical archives. The monitoring procedure is described in detail