University licenses and equipment

["Robert R. Milwicz" <milwicz@arundel.Princeton.EDU>]

I am interested in hearing from Broad Scope By-Product Material 
licensees and in particular Universities on the subject of 
instrumentation. 
I would like to know the following:

1. Which of the following instruments do you have as part of your 
radiation safety program?

Liquid Scintillation Counter

Automatic Gamma Counter

Low Level Alpha/Beta Counter

2. When you do your smear and leak tests counting, do you simply 
count all smears in your LSC or do you count in the instrument 
designed for the specific radiation. 

3. If you have these instruments, do you have a service contractor  do 
the maintenance and calibration or do you use  your staff or
do you wait for the instrument to fail and get a service rep in at that time.
  
4. Do you have a contractor provide the services 
like counting smears and leak testing sources? In other words, you do 
no health physics type counting but "hire it out." 

5. Another though, do you use the instruments that a researcher has 
as part of his/her research grant for your health physics operation?.
That way you do not have to have your own.

6. The final question, how do you think your license will be affected 
by the licensing agency if your health physics group does not have 
any of these pieces of counting equipment? 

These may seem like dumb questions but I have to deal with
management that wants every expenditure justified, has no 
understanding  about radiation detectors and wants to cut all costs 
and is asking me to justify having the three instruments described 
above and which have been in use for many years prior to the new 
dollar watch program.

I would appreciate any responses you can provide directly to me.

I have forgotten to include my e-mail in prior correspondence,  here 
it is now.

Bob Milwicz
milwicz@princeton.edu
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