Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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Full spectrum estimation of helicopter background and cosmic gamma-ray contribution for airborne measurements

  • Lukas Kotik (National Radiation Protection Institute (SURO)) ;
  • Marcel Ohera (National Radiation Protection Institute (SURO))
  • Received : 2022.07.20
  • Accepted : 2022.11.28
  • Published : 2023.03.25
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Abstract

The airborne radiation monitoring has been used in geophysics for more than forty years and now it also has its important role in emergency monitoring. The aircraft background and the cosmic gamma-rays contribute to the measured gamma spectrum on the aircraft board. This adverse effect should be eliminated before the data processing. The paper describes two semiparametric methods to estimate the full spectrum aircraft background and cosmic gamma-ray contribution from spectra measured at altitudes where terrestrial contribution is negligible. The methods only assume to know possible peak positions in spectra and their full width at half maximum, that can be easily obtained e.g. from terrestrial measurement. The methods were applied to real experimental data acquired on Mi-17 and Bell 412 helicopter boards. The IRIS airborne gamma-ray spectrometer, with 4×4 L NaI(Tl) crystals, produced by Pico Envirotec Inc., Canada, was used on helicopters' boards. To obtain valid estimate of the aircraft background and the cosmic contribution, the measurements over sea and large water areas were carried out. However, the satisfactory results over inland were also achieved comparing with those acquired over large water areas.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by Ministry of Interior of the Czech Republic as part of project Recovery Management Strategy for Affected Areas after Radiation Emergency, VH20172020015 and by the programme of the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic MV-17196-1/OBVV-2022.

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