Title :
Monitoring airborne alpha-emitter contamination
Author :
Kerr, P.L. ; Koster, J.E. ; Conaway, J.G. ; Bounds, J.A. ; Steadman, P.A. ; Whitley, C.W.
Author_Institution :
Los Alamos Nat. Lab., NM, USA
Abstract :
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
Keywords :
air pollution; air pollution measurement; alpha-particle detection; nuclear explosions; plutonium; radiation monitoring; radioactive pollution; Nevada Test Site; Pu; Pu sensor; REBOUND experiment; airborne alpha-emitter contamination monitoring; continuous air monitoring; nuclear explosions; Alpha particles; CADCAM; Computer aided manufacturing; Contamination; Detectors; Filters; Monitoring; Pollution measurement; Radioactive materials; Testing;
Conference_Titel :
Nuclear Science Symposium, 1997. IEEE
Conference_Location :
Albuquerque, NM
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-4258-5
DOI :
10.1109/NSSMIC.1997.672508
