In-house development of automatic distancing system for calibration check of portable radiation survey instruments

• Main Authors: Wiquar Ahmad, S R Mitra, A K Mitra, V Parashar, C S Mahala, S D Geete, S H Patil
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications 2017-01-01
• Series: Radiation Protection and Environment
• Subjects: Automatic distancing system; calibration; exposure; source
• Online Access: http://www.rpe.org.in/article.asp?issn=0972-0464;year=2017;volume=40;issue=2;spage=99;epage=102;aulast=Ahmad
• ISSN: 0972-0464

Calibration check of radiation survey instruments needs to be carried out periodically so as to verify that the calibration of instruments holds good during its use. Multipoint calibration check of every radiation survey instruments is carried out on quarterly basis. Conventionally, calibration check was done by aligning the source or the instrument manually at different distance from each other to obtain readings at different dose rates or radiation fields. This incurs radiation exposure to the radiation worker, which is avoidable. An automatic distancing system was developed in-house at Tarapur Atomic Power Station - 1 and 2 which minimized the exposure of handling radiation source by automatically aligning the source to the instrument and distance between them remotely and also increased the precision in measurement.