Radon in soils: Intercomparative studies

Abstract

Two kinds of experiments were designed to evaluate some of the variations that can be expected from radon in soil concentrations as measured with SSNTD, due mainly to close spacing monitoring in the field. Measurements were performed by two laboratories, ININ in Mexico and LPC in France. The first experimental design consisted of a series of 15 days exposures of twenty monitoring devices placed inside a single bore hole. Fluctuations obtained of the radon levels at the twenty closely spaced monitoring sites ranged from 9% to 33%. The second experiment was performed having 4 pairs of radon monitoring devices located at 4 different sites at the summit of the Nevado de Toluca volcano. Results show that the SSNTD technique is well suited for radon measurements intended for geophysical studies.