A new type of radiation detection and measurement device can help cleanup sites with radioactive contamination, making the process faster, more accurate and less expensive.
Hundreds of millions of dollars go toward cleanup of some major sites contaminated by radioactivity, primarily from the historic production of nuclear weapons during and after the World War II. These include the Hanford site in Washington, Savannah River site in South Carolina, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
A new patented radiation spectrometer, which will soon start production, will be the head product of a Corvallis-based spin-off company, Avicenna Instruments, based on the Oregon State University research.
“Unlike other detectors, this spectrometer is more efficient, and able to measure and quantify both gamma and beta radiation at the same time,” said David Hamby, an OSU professor of health physics. “Before this two different types of detectors and other chemical tests were needed in a time-consuming process.”
“This system will be able to provide accurate results in 15 minutes that previously might have taken half a day,” Hamby said. “That saves steps, time and money.”
The spectrometer, developed over ten years by Hamby and Abi Farsoni, an assistant professor in the College of Engineering, can quickly tell the type and amount of radionuclides that are present in something like a soil sample — contaminants such as cesium 137 or strontium 90 — that were produced from reactor operations. And it can distinguish between gamma rays and beta particles, which is necessary to determine the level of contamination.
“Cleaning up radioactive contamination is something we can do, but the process is costly, and often the question when working in the field is how clean is clean enough,” Hamby said. “At some point the remaining level of radioactivity is not a concern. So we need the ability to do frequent and accurate testing to protect the environment while also controlling costs.”
This system should allow that, Hamby said, and may eventually see use in monitoring processes in the nuclear energy industry, or possibly medical applications in the use of radioactive tracers.
The OSU College of Engineering has contracted with Ludlum Instruments, a Sweetwater, Texas, manufacturer, to produce the first instruments, and the OSU Office of Technology Transfer is seeking a licensee for commercial development. The electronic systems for the spectrometers will undergo production in Oregon by Avicenna Instruments, the researchers said.
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