Calculating Minimum Detectable Activity for a moving scintillator detector using real-time speed measurement : Implementing a monitoring system to improve accuracy of surface contamination measurement systems

Sammanfattning: Surface contamination occurs in nuclear facilities, something that is important to detect easily and efficiently. Using today’s methods to detect nuclear surface contamination may cause certain inconsistencies as the human operator is solely trusted to keep the detector at the correct distance and move it at the correct speed. This thesis project aims to address the problem of inconsistent measurements with respect to the current measurement methods. A system is designed to monitor the measurement process with regards to detector velocity and height. The system will trigger a warning when the minimum detectable activity is too high, as it would lead to inconsistent results. This system consists of a cart-detector setup with a scintillation detector and velocity measurement device(s). Software will utilize the measurement data to implement the aforementioned monitoring. The system aims to be compliant with international standards, such as the ISO 11929 and the ISO 7503 standards, and will thus make use of these standards. The result of the part-analysis for each component of the system showed a large inaccuracy regarding the Intertial Measurement Units (IMUs); hence, the robotic wheels were chosen as the main method of measuring speed for this project. The robotic wheels and the detector were shown to be sufficiently accurate for the desired measurements. The Raspberry Pi 4 model B, the on- board computer, was also shown to be performance-wise and property-wise well suited for the project. This project showed that there is a theoretical way to implement the speed of a moving detector-rig into the Minimum Detectable Activity (MDA) formula. However, the implementation investigated in this project suggests that full compatibility with ISO 7503 was not achievable.