The second banana

["Tom Johnson" <tjohnson@radtrain.com>]

Just to finish up on the banana question (I hope that dose calculations such
as this are not too far off topic):


Assuming the surface of the container is contaminated with only Cs-137 at 4
Bq/cm^2, and it is effectively an infinite plane source of activity, with
minimal scattering from the shipping container, and the person is at about 1
meter from the container, I calculate the dose rate would be about 4 X 10E-6
mrem per hour using ICRP 26 weighting factors; ICRP 60 is about the same.

>A friend of mine at Ringhals NPP used Microhield today for the banana
>”wall”: Infinite slab, 15 m thickness (”depth”), assumed density: 1
>g/cc. ICRP51 data, and one meter distance. He came to 4.5 nSv/h which
>essentially confirms Tom’s previous calculation.

My excuse for not getting the same answer is that I used a different banana
density.

Tom Johnson
tjohnson@radtrain.com

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