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Individual monitoring with radiophotoluminescence (RPL) passive integrating dosimeters
Presenter: Burçin Okyar (IAEA), Michael Hajek (IAEA), Roman Abutalipov (IAEA), Yasuhiro Koguchi (Japan) and Alain Savary (France)
Date of broadcast: 24 June 2020, 10:00 AM CEST
About the webinar
Doses received by workers from external and internal exposure should be evaluated and can, in most circumstances, be readily assessed from the results of a systematic programme of individual monitoring. IAEA International Basic Safety Standards (GSR Part 3) and IAEA General Safety Guide on Occupational Radiation Protection (GSG-7) set out the requirements and guidance, respectively, with regard to the use of individual monitoring for dose assessment purposes. Where individual monitoring of workers is to be performed, each worker should be provided with an integrating personal dosimeter.
Individual dosimetry should be performed by a dosimetry service approved by a country’s regulatory body. The regulatory body should require such a service to supply dosimeters capable of measuring personal dose equivalent, Hp(10), Hp(3) and/or Hp(0.07), as appropriate, with adequate accuracy for all relevant types of radiation.
Only a few dosimetric methods are widely used for individual monitoring purposes. They differ in the technology used to detect radiation. As a consequence, they also vary with regard to characteristics such as the ability to measure radiation of various types and energies, the detector size, sensitivity, technological complexity, ease and degree of automation, and robustness with respect to environmental conditions. In selecting a dosimetry system, these characteristics should be carefully considered in the light of the local circumstances.
The RPL dosimetry and how it works
Radiophotoluminescence (RPL) dosimetry using silver-activated phosphate glass has emerged as a key technology for individual monitoring in the 1990s. The defect centres associated with RPL are formed upon radiation exposure in a non-ionizing excitation process. When the glasses are subsequently exposed to ultraviolet radiation, visible light is emitted with an intensity that is linearly related to the absorbed dose from ionizing radiation. Unlike thermally (TL) or optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), the induced luminescent centres associated with RPL are not destroyed by the normal reading process and are extremely stable, so that fading at room temperature is negligible over a period of several years and the dose information can be obtained repeatedly at any time during long-term dose accumulation.
Learning objectives
Participants of the webinar will learn about:
- IAEA GSR Part 3 requirements and GSG-7 guidance for technical service providers for external individual monitoring;
- RPL dosimetry and setting an RPL dosimetry laboratory for individual and workplace monitoring;
- Routine operation of an RPL dosimetry laboratory for individual monitoring;
- Clinical applications of RPL dosimeters;
- Experience of laboratories to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic;
- Experience of the IAEA Radiation Safety Technical Services on characterization of RPL dosimetry system for individual monitoring.
About the presenters
Yasuhiro Koguchi
Yasuhiro Koguchi is the Deputy Head of Oarai Research Center, Chiyoda Technol Cooperation in Japan. He has more than 15 years of experience in the field of radiation protection, especially in external individual monitoring. He was a consultant in the Occupational Radiation Protection Unit of the IAEA Department of Nuclear Safety and Security in 2014. He is also member of the Technical Committee on Radiation Protection of the International Organisation for Standardization (ISO TC85/SC2) and the Radiation Protection Instrumentation Technical Committee of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC TC45/SC45B).
Alain Savary
Alain Savary is the Head of Metrology and Method Unit of the Department dedicated to the radiological monitoring of workers at the Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (L'Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire, IRSN) since 2015.
He is the technical manager of measurements in external dosimetry, anthropogammetry and radiotoxicology. For more than 15 years, he has been working in an operational intervention service to carry out radiological assessments, such as characterization of radioactive sources and waste, polluted sites.His experience in field measurement and laboratory measurement are useful for his role as a crisis team member within the IRSN crisis organization.