Precision environmental radiation monitoring system

A new precision low-level environmental radiation monitoring system has been developed and tested at Jefferson Lab. This system provides environmental radiation measurements with accuracy and stability of the order of 1 nGy/h in an hour, roughly corresponding to approximately 1% of the natural cosmic background at the sea level. Advanced electronic front-end has been designed and produced for use with the industry-standard High Pressure Ionization Chamber detector hardware. A new highly sensitive readout electronic circuit was designed to measure charge from the virtually suspended ionization chamber ion collecting electrode. New signal processing technique and dedicated data acquisition were tested together with the new readout. The designed system enabled data collection in a remote Linux-operated computer workstation, which was connected to the detectors using a standard telephone cable line. The data acquisition system algorithm is built around the continuously running 24-bit resolution 192 kHz data sampling analog to digital convertor. The major features of the design include: extremely low leakage current in the input circuit, true charge integrating mode operation, and relatively fast response to the intermediate radiation change. These features allow operating of the device as an environmental radiation monitor, at the perimeters of the radiation-generating installations in densely populated areas, like in other monitoring and security applications requiring high precision and long-term stability. Initial system evaluation results are presented.