Sixth personnel dosimetry intercomparison study

Abstract

The Sixth Personnel Dosimetry Intercomparison Study was conducted March 25 to 27, 1980, at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Dosimeters from 28 participating agencies were mounted on anthropomorphic phantoms and exposed to a range of low-level dose equivalents (1.8 to 11.5 mSv neutron, 0.1 to 1.1 mSv gamma) which could be encountered during routine personnel monitoring in mixed radiation fields. The Health Physics Research Reactor (HPRR) operated in the steady-state mode served as the source of radiation for six separate exposures. Lucite and concrete shields along with the unshielded reactor were used to provide three different neutron and gamma spectra. Results reported by the participating agencies showed that TLD-albedo and TLD-700 dosimeters generally provided the most accurate measurements of neutron and gamma dose equivalents, respectively. Film was found to be unsatisfactory for measuring neutron doses produced by HPRR spectra in that measured dose equivalents were much lower than reference values. The TLD-100 dosimeters yielded gamma doses which were much too high indicating that this dosimeter type is generally unsuitable for use in mixed radiation fields similar to those encountered in this study without the use of large correction factors. Although the overall reported results exhibited improvement in performance relative to previous intercomparison studies, the composite measured data showed variations of more than a factor of 2 between measurements of the same exposure made by different agencies.