Recent trends in radioprotection dosimetry: Promising solutions for personal neutron dosimetry

Abstract

Conventional detectors used in radiation protection dosimetry (for a given amount of energy deposited in their macroscopic volumes) are more sensitive to sparse radiations (electrons, X or gamma) than to fast neutrons or high-LET particles, i.e. those particles characterized by high biological effectiveness. By contrast, detectors needed in radiation protection monitoring should have a registration sensitivity which follows the opposite trend. With conventional detectors, in order to register the high-LET component in mixed fields, it is necessary to count individual energy-depositing tracks thus requiring elaborate electronics or complex automatic systems. In this paper new detecting methods will be described, which are very sensitive to fast neutrons and are completely insensitive to gamma radiations. These new detectors are based on the same properties of highly ionizing particles which determine their high biological effectiveness, namely the high deposition of energy at microscopic and submicroscopic distances from the particle trajectory in solid materials. Another important characteristic, common to these new detecting methods, is the exploitation of the high-energy deposition in the vicinity of the track to initiate avalanche-type of processes, which can be easily detected. These new registration techniques are respectively the electrochemically etched damage track detectors and the bubble damage polymer detectors. The simplicity, low cost and small size of these new detecting systems, together with their high sensitivity and their ability to discriminate against large fluxes of sparsely ionizing radiations make it possible to tackle some of the most difficult problems yet to be solved in radioprotection monitoring, such as personnel neutron dosimetry.