A Personnel Monitor for Alpha Contamination

John Valentine
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
February 19, 2002

Abstract:
A second-generation personnel monitor for alpha contamination based on long-range alpha detection (LRAD) technology was constructed and tested. The first-generation monitor achieved approximately 3000 decay per minute (dpm) sensitivity with a one-minute data acquisition. Through improvements is air-handling, background compensation, and detector design, the sensitivity was reduced to about 400 dpm for the second-generation monitor. After providing some background on LRAD technology and the first-generation monitor, we will focus on how the design was improved and verified using a scaled model, as well as on the characterization of the second-generation monitor. In addition, potential design and data analysis improvements will be discussed.