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Year : 2010 | Volume
: 33
| Issue : 3 | Page : 123-127 |
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Development of a laundry monitor for contamination control
Vishwanath P Singh1, SS Managanvi1, Tarak N Shah2
1 Health Physics Section (Directorate of KM & HSE, NPCIL), Kaiga Generating Station-3&4, Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited, Uttar Kannada, Karwar, Karnataka, India 2 Pla Electro Appliances Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, India
Correspondence Address:
Vishwanath P Singh Health Physics Section (Directorate of KM & HSE, NPCIL), Kaiga Generating Station-3&4, Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited, Uttar Kannada, Karwar, Karnataka India
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |

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The radiation dose due to contamination can be avoided / minimized as a result of good practices, adherence to Radiation Protection Procedures and controlling by monitoring level of contamination of the personnel, in areas, on equipments and PPEs. Radioactive contamination on the materials, human body or other undesirable places is extremely harmful to the personnel at Nuclear Power Plants. Spread and cross contamination of radioactivity from the controlled areas is a very complicated problem for power reactor plant management. Protective cloths and PPEs used by workers during normal operation and maintenance as well as bieannual outage of the power plant are found contaminated by 60 Co, 90 Sr, 124 Sb and 137 Cs mainly. The contamination control and proper monitoring is a key of radiation protection to avoid superfluous local exposure which may result in local body radiation effects. A economical, simple to use and self contained new developed Laundry Monitor having 12 trays, each containing two energy compensated GM detectors with lead shielding has been installed at Kaiga Generating Station-3&4 with average monitor efficiency 0.23% (for 90 Sr/ 90 Yt plate source), LLD and MDA 7.97 cps and 34.65 Bq respectively. The operational experience of user-friendly Laundry Monitor provided very good results for contamination measurement and useful in controlling the spread of contamination. |
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