Chemical dosimeter for mixed n/gamma fields

[denison.8@osu.edu (Eric Denison)]

Greetings--

I'm a graduate student in Nuclear Engineering/Health Physics investigating
the development and use of chemical dosimeters for measuring low-level
mixed radiation fields.  I've done several library and 'net-based searches
for references, including using NIH's Medline and a wide-ranging journals
link through a consortium of Ohio college libraries.  I've found very few
references to successful attempts at thermal and epithermal neutron
dosimetry or low-dose gamma dosimetry using chemical dosimeters, and next
to nothing on proton dosimetry.

Anybody out there have any suggestions on references or points of contact
who might not be on Radsafe?  I'd especially appreciate any input from
those Radsafe folks who do dosimetry for a living (Sandy, Bob, Tosh, Les, I
know you're out there <g>).  For the critics of such requests, I'm not
looking for anyone to do my work for me (I've already been through over 100
pages of search results, 100+ abstracts, and 30-40 full papers), but I'd
like to avoid spending any more of my time and my advisor's money either
running down dead-end streets or reinventing something that's already
commercially available.  It's come time to either get into the lab and
start experimenting or drop back and punt.

Please reply to denison.8@osu.edu unless you think the list really needs
this stuff.  Thanks in advance for the assistance.

Eric Denison

*****************************************************
More info for folks that are *really* interested:

I'm aware some of the recent advances in NMR- and EPR-analyzed liquid and
solid-state chemical dosimeters, but we're really hoping to develop a
system that can be reliably evaluated on-site at locations without
convenient MRI or NMR facilities (I'm thinking spectrofluorometry).

Most of the neutron references I've seen thus far deal with fast neutrons
or high fluxes (1E13 n/cm^2/sec and up), where we're looking at
applications topping out at about 1E9 and energies <10keV.  The best
chemical gamma dosimeters I've found have obviously been designed for
therapeutic ranges (most MDD's in the range of 1 to 5 Gy, the best claiming
0.1 Gy, upper limits in the hundreds and thousands of Gy), but we're
looking at gamma contamination (of a neutron beam) that MCNP shows should
be on the order of 0.1 cGy/sec.  Proton dose should be next to
non-existent, but I wouldn't mind being able to add it to the mix.

Thanks again!

Eric


J. Eric Denison
Nuclear Engineering Program
The Ohio State University
2030 Robinson Laboratory
206 West 18th Avenue
Columbus OH 43210
(614) 292-3681 or -1074
denison.8@osu.edu


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