A Feasibility Study for the Use of BGO Scintillator in Conjunction with a Plastic Optical Fiber for Remote Gamma Ray Dosimetry

Abstract

A feasibility study has been carried out on a remote radiation dosimeter employing a BGO scintillator as the radiation sensing head and a plastic optical fiber as a light pipe. The sensor head is prepared in two sizes: the larger one has the size 4.7mm × 4.7mm × 10mm and the smaller one has the size 2.2mm × 2.2mm × 10mm. A low attenuation plastic optical fiber with 3mm diameter and 10m length is attached to the square surface of the larger scintillator, and the same optical fiber with 2mm diameter is attached to the smaller one. The polished scintillator is wrapped with white Teflon tape, and the fiber is shielded with a thermal shrink tube to block the ambient light. The lights generated in the sensor head are detected by a pulse-type photomultiplier tube module. Co-60 sources with radioactivity of 50μCi and 1mCi are used to test the performance of the constructed dosimeter models. The total number of pulses is measured as a function of the distance from the sensor head to the source. MCNPX simulation is also carried out for the source and dosimeter arrangements to assess the feasibility of the dosimeter model. The dosimeter model measures fairly well the change in the number of pulses as the source-to-detector distance changes, but shows poor capability to measure the pulse height spectrum and source activity.