Published: 1981
Total Pages:
Get eBook
The Seventh Personnel Dosimetry Intercomparison Study was conducted March 31-April 10, 1981, at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Dosimeters from 34 participating agencies were mounted on anthropomorphic phantoms and exposed to a range of low-level dose equivalents (1.5-15.0mSv neutron and 0.1-2.8 mSv gamma) which could be encountered during routine personnel monitoring in mixed radiation fields. The Health Physics Research Reactor, operating in the steady-state mode, served as the source of radiation for two equivalent sets of six separate exposures. Lucite and concrete shields along with the unshielded reactor provided three different neutron and gamma spectra for five of the exposures in each set. Results reported by the participating agencies showed that no single type of neutron dosimeter exhibited acceptable performance characteristics for all mixed-field environments encountered in this study. Film, TLD, and TLD-albed dosimeters were found to be inadequate for neutron dose equivalent measurements when large numbers of slow neutrons are present unless significant corrections are made to measured results. Track dosimeters indicated the least sensitivity to spectral characteristics, but did not always yield to the most accurate results. Gamma dose measurements showed that TLD-700 dosimeters produced significantly more accurate results than film dosimeters which tend to overestimate gamma doses in mixed radiation fields.