Recent developments in radon metrology: new aspects in the calibration of radon, thoron and progeny devices

Röttger, A.; Honig, A.

doi:10.1093/rpd/ncr047

Cited by 14 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Within traceRadon, new chains of traceability are developed with respect to the activity concentration in the atmosphere as well as for the radon flux from the soil. Traceability in the metrological sense means that the measurement procedure is linked to the SI system of units in an absolute sense, in the expected measurement range (Röttger and Honig, 2011). An important part of the calibration and the measurement is the assignment of an uncertainty, which includes all individual uncertainty contributions (statistics of the measurement, uncertainty of the calibration, intrinsic background of the instrument, etc.).…”

Section: Project Plan Of Traceradonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Radon metrology for use in climate change observation and radiation protection at the environmental level

Röttger

Grossi³

et al. 2022

Adv. Geosci.

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Abstract. Radon (222Rn) gas is the largest source of public exposure to naturally occurring radioactivity and the identification of radon priority areas is required by the Council Directive 2013/59/Euratom. Radon is also used as a tracer to improve atmospheric transport models and to indirectly estimate greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes using the Radon Tracer Method (RTM). This method is based on the correlation between atmospheric concentrations of radon and GHG, together with information on the radon flux data. For radiological data, all European countries have installed networks of automatic gamma dose rate monitoring stations and report the real-time information gathered to the European Radiological Data Exchange Platform (EURDEP). So far, atmospheric radon activity concentrations and radon fluxes are not yet reported in EURDEP, nor routinely measured within the European radiological networks although these observations could help to avoid false positives results. Due to above applications, there is a need of building a metrological chain to ensure high quality radon activity concentrations and radon flux measurements. Both climate and radiation protection research communities underline the need for improved traceability in low-level atmospheric radon measurements (Khanbabaee et al., 2021). The EMPIR project 19ENV01 traceRadon1 is aimed towards providing the necessary measurement infrastructure and transfer standards to fulfil this need. Results of this project are particularly important for improving independent GHG emission estimates that support national reporting under the Paris Agreement on climate change and for the Council Directive 2013/59/Euratom, thus benefitting two large scientific communities. In this paper, early results, such as new activity standard developments and an overview of commercial and research radon monitors are presented and discussed. These results will feed into the traceRadon project with respect to radionuclide metrology in air and its potential for the improvement of the RTM.

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Section: Project Plan Of Traceradonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Radon metrology for use in climate change observation and radiation protection at the environmental level

Röttger

Grossi³

et al. 2022

Adv. Geosci.

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“…The primary calibration of the multi-wire impulse ionization chamber was performed in the radon reference chamber (RNK) of PTB (Röttger and Honig, 2011). For the measurement, the MWIIC was placed into the radon reference chamber and exposed to radon from a radon gas standard inside the closed chamber.…”

Section: Calibration Of the Mwiicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of a transfer standard for the measurement of low Rn-222 activity concentration in air

Linzmaier

Röttger

2014

Applied Radiation and Isotopes

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“…2c) of the radon measurement technique group at the PhysikalischTechnische Bundesanstalt (PTB, Braunschweig, Germany). This group at the PTB developed and operates the world's first primary standard for Tn activity concentration in air (Röttger and Honig, 2011). The RAD7 monitors were compared to the reference instrument of the PTB for the concentration range of 0-4300 Bq m −3 .…”

Section: Tn Sensitivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

An automated system for selective and continuous measurements of vertical thoron profiles for the determination of transport times near the ground

Plake

Trebs

2013

Atmos. Meas. Tech.

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Abstract. The quantification of in-canopy transport times is of major importance for the investigation of sources, sinks and net fluxes of reactive trace gases within plant canopies. The Damköhler number, which compares timescales of chemical reactions with transport times, is a widely applied measure to evaluate flux divergences. In this study we present and evaluate a novel automated measurement system for selective vertical thoron (Tn) profiles near the Earth's surface and demonstrate its suitability for the direct and reliable determination of transport times within a natural grassland canopy. For the first time, we perform a rigorous determination of systematic and random uncertainties of Tn (and Rn) concentrations under field conditions for this type of measurement system. The obtained median precisions for three concentration classes (> 100 Bq m−3, 100–15 Bq m−3, < 15 Bq m−3) were 8.8%, 23.2% and 132.1% for Tn (and 16.6%, 25.0%, 99.2% for Rn). We calculate in-canopy transport times (τ) and propagate their uncertainty from the individual errors of the Tn concentration measurements. A quality assessment of τ for the field experiment during a period of 51 days revealed good data quality with 44% of the relative uncertainties below 50%. The occurrence of transport time uncertainties higher than 100% was caused by absolute Tn gradients lower than 70 Bq m−3 m−1, which was found for 22% of all determined transport times. In addition, the method was found to be highly sensitive to the Tn concentrations at the upper of the two inlet heights (zu). Low values of CTnzu result in high absolute uncertainties of the transport time. A comparison with empirical parameterizations revealed a much lower scatter for the τ values determined from our measurements. We found an excellent agreement with τ values obtained by the in-canopy resistance approach used, e.g., in the SURFATM model during daytime, while the SURFATM model significantly overestimated transport times during nighttime.

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Recent developments in radon metrology: new aspects in the calibration of radon, thoron and progeny devices

Cited by 14 publications

References 6 publications

Radon metrology for use in climate change observation and radiation protection at the environmental level

Radon metrology for use in climate change observation and radiation protection at the environmental level

Development of a transfer standard for the measurement of low Rn-222 activity concentration in air

An automated system for selective and continuous measurements of vertical thoron profiles for the determination of transport times near the ground

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