Method for the Determination of 222Rn (Radon) and 220Rn (Thoron) - Exhalation Rates Using Alpha-Spectroscopy

Radon and radioactivity at a town overlying Uranium ores in northern Greece

“…Keller et al, 1982;Keller and Schutz, 1988). In our case, we measured the radon flux into the non-ventilated basement of an old house, i.e.…”

“…2 in Old Town. We used the equation C(t) ¼ F A t/V (Grossi et al, 2011;Keller et al, 1982), where C(t) is the Rn concentration in a closed chamber after time t, F is the Rn flux, t is the time, A is the area covered by the chamber and V is the volume of the chamber. As closed chamber we used the basement of the house, which was well ventilated before the beginning of each flux determination and then the door and windows were sealed for t hours.…”

Inter-comparison of different direct and indirect methods to determine radon flux from soil

“…In spite of sufficient understanding of the theoretical processes controlling release of 222 Rn from soil to the atmosphere (Nazaroff and Nero, 1988;Porstendorfer, 1994), comprehension of the radon flux and its distribution over the earth is still under question because of a lack of direct radon flux measurements in many regions. Direct measurements of radon flux are ideally made using the accumulation method (Keller et al, 1982;Keller and Schutz, 1988) which allows 222 Rn gas to accumulate and to be measured in a chamber placed over the soil. Nevertheless, this approach is not practical on a worldwide scale.…”

The study of natural radionuclides and radon exhalation rate in ceramic materials containing fly ash developed in Israel

“…The measured material was grounded and packed in 1 L Marinelly beakers measured on an HPGe detector with 42% relative efficiency (to NaI(Tl) 3 × 3 ) for the 1332 keV γ -ray of 60 Co. For the determination of radon exhalation rate, both alpha and gamma ray spectrometry were applied. The method of alpha spectroscopy developed by Keller et al [5] is based on measurements of the electrostatic deposition of positively charged ions (produced by stripping effect) of radon decay products ( 216,218 Po) onto a metallic surface with subsequent alpha spectrometry using a surface barrier detector. The measuring volume consists of an aluminum hemisphere, which is placed on the surface of the sample and hermetically sealed.…”

“…The radiation index for a standard room (3 × 3 × 2.7 m 3 ) containing ceramic blocks (25 × 20 × 10 cm 3 ) was found to be 0.62 for a ceramic material of density 800 kg/m 3 , and 0.76 for a ceramic material of density 1200 kg/m 3 (365/3047 + 78. 5 room will be of ceramic blocks and therefore, the radiation dose expected from these two walls will be only a third (two walls out of six faces) from the total radiation dose leading to a radiation index of 0.21 (0.09 mSv/y) The actual results of the measurements of radiation dose from a wall built from ceramic blocks at various distances from the wall are summarized in Table 4. Fig.…”