Personal neutron dosimetry in nuclear power plants using etched track and albedo thermoluminescence dosemeters

Abstract

Measurement of the personal dose equivalent rates for neutrons is a difficult task because available dosemeters do not provide the required energy response and sensitivity. Furthermore, the available wide calibration spectra recommended by the International Standard Organisation does not reproduce adequately the spectra encountered in practical situations of the nuclear industry. There is a real necessity to characterise the radiation field, in which workers can be exposed, and to calibrate personal dosemeters in order to determine the dose equivalent in these installations. For this reason, we measure the neutron spectrum with our Bonner sphere system and we fold this spectrum with energy-dependent fluence-to-dose conversion coefficients to obtain the reference dose equivalent rate. This reference value is then compared with the personal dosemeter reading to determine a field-specific correction factor. In this paper, we present the values of this field-specific correction factor for etched track and albedo thermoluminescence dosemeters at three measurement locations inside the containment building of the Vandellòs II nuclear power plant. We have found that assigning to each personal dosemeter the mean value of the field-specific correction factors of the three measurement locations, allows the evaluation of neutron personal dose equivalent rate with a relative uncertainty of approximately 25 and 15% for the PADC and albedo dosemeters, respectively.

La dosimétrie et spectrométrie neutroniques : la contribution de l’université autonome de Barcelone

“…Il s'agit d'un convertisseur de 3 mm d'air, qui convertit les neutrons thermiques en protons par l'intermédiaire de la réaction 14 N (n, p) 14 C. Cette configuration (PADC0) a été exposée dans différents points du bâtiment réacteur de la centrale nucléaire de Vandellòs II (Fernández et al, 2004a) durant une campagne de caractérisation des spectres de neutrons avec notre système de spectrométrie neutronique par sphères de Bonner. L'étalonnage des dosimètres de routine est généralement fait en exposant ceuxci à des sources de neutrons de référence.…”

Development of a Brazilian gamma–neutron dosimeter

“…Different materials and methods has been studied and proposed to a efficient neutron dosimetry [1,2].…”

Production of synthetic polycrystals of CaSiO3 and their study as new detectors of gamma radiation, thermal neutrons and accelerated ions.

“…These materials were exposed to either gamma, neutron or electron beam irradiation and their use as dosimeters for high and very high radiation dose analyzed [37,38,43,[54][55][56][57]. Neutron detection from a nuclear reactor or neutron sources (such as Am-Be or 252 Cf) using thermoluminescence detectors has been a great challenge in radiation dosimetry, and several works have been devoted to investigating this process in the past [58,[63][64][65][66][67][68][69]. Particularly, interaction of thermal and epithermal neutron with matter has awakened special interest in some authors because a larger effective neutron capture cross-section than fast neutrons is found for some nuclides like 10 B and 6 Li [70][71][72].…”