Practical Radiation Detection and Measurement

A Complete Field Reference on Geiger Counters, Ionization Chambers, Scintillators, Gamma Spectroscopy for Safety Officers

von Tobin F. Renshaw

560 Seiten, Taschenbuch

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

Read Every Reading Right - The First Time

A survey meter hands you a number in seconds. Whether that number means an area is safe, a shipment is clean, or a worker was protected depends entirely on what you knew before you took the reading - the detector's blind spots, the counting geometry, the background beneath it, and the limit of what the method could ever have found. That gap between a reading and a defensible result is where careers stall and findings are written.

This field reference closes it. Written in the voice of a working practitioner rather than a textbook compiler, it moves from what the detector actually sees, through every instrument class you will hold - Geiger tubes, ionization chambers, proportional counters, scintillators, neutron detectors, and high-purity germanium - and on into full gamma spectroscopy, nuclide identification, and quantitative activity determination. Every technique arrives with the numbers that matter: probe distances, scan speeds, count times, acceptance windows, detection limits, and the precise conditions under which each method quietly fails. Nothing is left as theory you must translate yourself at two in the morning.

What this reference equips you to do

- Choose the right instrument before the job starts - match detector type, energy range, and probe geometry to the actual measurement question instead of grabbing whatever is on the shelf- Survey alpha and beta contamination to a standard that holds up - air gap, substrate effects, surface roughness, and the efficiency determinations most programs get wrong- State what you could not have found - critical level, detection limit, and minimum detectable activity worked through in plain arithmetic, so no non-detect is ever reported bare- Read a gamma spectrum before the software offers an opinion - recognize escape peaks, sum peaks, backscatter, lead X-rays, and background lines on sight- Identify a nuclide you can defend - energy match, efficiency-corrected intensity ratios, half-life confirmation, and the exclusions that turn a hypothesis into a determination- Diagnose a failing instrument fast - erratic counts, drifting baselines, moisture ingress, cable faults, and the signatures that separate each from the others- Write records that survive an inspection - method headers, survey maps, traceability files, and the documentation habits that make a measurement reconstructable years later

Buy now and put a complete, field-tested measurement discipline behind every number you sign your name to.

The measurements that matter most are the ones nobody ever notices, because they prevented something. Build the judgment that makes those measurements reliable - and become the person others come to when a reading does not make sense.

• Reihe: Independently published
• ISBN: 9798175400701
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 18.09.2026
• Größe: 279 x 216 mm
• Verlag: Independently published