Portable Gamma-Ray Spectrometry for Decommissioning: Anywhere, Anytime, Anything

Abstract

The recent development of extended-source modeling software for portable gamma-ray spectrometers has been a boon to large nuclear projects in the field. This paper reports AECL’s experience with such instruments during the first phase of decommissioning the Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment (now Whiteshell Laboratories). They have been used for routine measurements of soil cores, for estimates of radionuclide content of waste packages, for surveys of potentially contaminated terrain adjacent to a waste storage facility, and for scans of drums containing likely-clean material. The instruments have been found to be sufficiently sensitive and almost as accurate as laboratory spectrometers using reference sources and calibrated counting geometries.