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Miniaturised Low-Cost Gamma Scanning Platform for Contamination Identification, Localisation and Characterisation: A New Instrument in the Decommissioning Toolkit

Formerly clandestine, abandoned and legacy nuclear facilities, whether associated with civil or military applications, represent a significant decommissioning challenge owing to the lack of knowledge surrounding the existence, location and types of radioactive material(s) that may be present. Conseq...

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Autores principales: Verbelen, Yannick, Martin, Peter G., Ahmad, Kamran, Kaluvan, Suresh, Scott, Thomas B.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8074328/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33924123
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s21082884
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author Verbelen, Yannick
Martin, Peter G.
Ahmad, Kamran
Kaluvan, Suresh
Scott, Thomas B.
author_facet Verbelen, Yannick
Martin, Peter G.
Ahmad, Kamran
Kaluvan, Suresh
Scott, Thomas B.
author_sort Verbelen, Yannick
collection PubMed
description Formerly clandestine, abandoned and legacy nuclear facilities, whether associated with civil or military applications, represent a significant decommissioning challenge owing to the lack of knowledge surrounding the existence, location and types of radioactive material(s) that may be present. Consequently, mobile and highly deployable systems that are able to identify, spatially locate and compositionally assay contamination ahead of remedial actions are of vital importance. Deployment imposes constraints to dimensions resulting from small diameter access ports or pipes. Herein, we describe a prototype low-cost, miniaturised and rapidly deployable ‘cell characterisation’ gamma-ray scanning system to allow for the examination of enclosed (internal) or outdoor (external) spaces for radioactive ‘hot-spots’. The readout from the miniaturised and lead-collimated gamma-ray spectrometer, that is progressively rastered through a stepped snake motion, is combined with distance measurements derived from a single-point laser range-finder to obtain an array of measurements in order to yield a 3-dimensional point-cloud, based on a polar coordinate system—scaled for radiation intensity. Existing as a smaller and more cost-effective platform than presently available, we are able to produce a millimetre-accurate 3D volumetric rendering of a space—whether internal or external, onto which fully spectroscopic radiation intensity data can be overlain to pinpoint the exact positions at which (even low abundance) gamma-emitting materials exist.
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spelling pubmed-80743282021-04-27 Miniaturised Low-Cost Gamma Scanning Platform for Contamination Identification, Localisation and Characterisation: A New Instrument in the Decommissioning Toolkit Verbelen, Yannick Martin, Peter G. Ahmad, Kamran Kaluvan, Suresh Scott, Thomas B. Sensors (Basel) Communication Formerly clandestine, abandoned and legacy nuclear facilities, whether associated with civil or military applications, represent a significant decommissioning challenge owing to the lack of knowledge surrounding the existence, location and types of radioactive material(s) that may be present. Consequently, mobile and highly deployable systems that are able to identify, spatially locate and compositionally assay contamination ahead of remedial actions are of vital importance. Deployment imposes constraints to dimensions resulting from small diameter access ports or pipes. Herein, we describe a prototype low-cost, miniaturised and rapidly deployable ‘cell characterisation’ gamma-ray scanning system to allow for the examination of enclosed (internal) or outdoor (external) spaces for radioactive ‘hot-spots’. The readout from the miniaturised and lead-collimated gamma-ray spectrometer, that is progressively rastered through a stepped snake motion, is combined with distance measurements derived from a single-point laser range-finder to obtain an array of measurements in order to yield a 3-dimensional point-cloud, based on a polar coordinate system—scaled for radiation intensity. Existing as a smaller and more cost-effective platform than presently available, we are able to produce a millimetre-accurate 3D volumetric rendering of a space—whether internal or external, onto which fully spectroscopic radiation intensity data can be overlain to pinpoint the exact positions at which (even low abundance) gamma-emitting materials exist. MDPI 2021-04-20 /pmc/articles/PMC8074328/ /pubmed/33924123 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s21082884 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Communication
Verbelen, Yannick
Martin, Peter G.
Ahmad, Kamran
Kaluvan, Suresh
Scott, Thomas B.
Miniaturised Low-Cost Gamma Scanning Platform for Contamination Identification, Localisation and Characterisation: A New Instrument in the Decommissioning Toolkit
title Miniaturised Low-Cost Gamma Scanning Platform for Contamination Identification, Localisation and Characterisation: A New Instrument in the Decommissioning Toolkit
title_full Miniaturised Low-Cost Gamma Scanning Platform for Contamination Identification, Localisation and Characterisation: A New Instrument in the Decommissioning Toolkit
title_fullStr Miniaturised Low-Cost Gamma Scanning Platform for Contamination Identification, Localisation and Characterisation: A New Instrument in the Decommissioning Toolkit
title_full_unstemmed Miniaturised Low-Cost Gamma Scanning Platform for Contamination Identification, Localisation and Characterisation: A New Instrument in the Decommissioning Toolkit
title_short Miniaturised Low-Cost Gamma Scanning Platform for Contamination Identification, Localisation and Characterisation: A New Instrument in the Decommissioning Toolkit
title_sort miniaturised low-cost gamma scanning platform for contamination identification, localisation and characterisation: a new instrument in the decommissioning toolkit
topic Communication
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8074328/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33924123
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s21082884
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