Nuclear Engineering and Technology

Korean Nuclear Society (한국원자력학회)
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Application of advanced spectral-ratio radon background correction in the UAV-borne gamma-ray spectrometry

  • Jigen Xia (China Research Institute of Radiowave Propagation) ;
  • Baolin Song (College of Nuclear Technology and Automation Engineering, Chengdu University of Technology) ;
  • Yi Gu (College of Nuclear Technology and Automation Engineering, Chengdu University of Technology) ;
  • Zhiqiang Li (China Research Institute of Radiowave Propagation) ;
  • Jie Xu (College of Nuclear Technology and Automation Engineering, Chengdu University of Technology) ;
  • Liangquan Ge (College of Nuclear Technology and Automation Engineering, Chengdu University of Technology) ;
  • Qingxian Zhang (College of Nuclear Technology and Automation Engineering, Chengdu University of Technology) ;
  • Guoqiang Zeng (College of Nuclear Technology and Automation Engineering, Chengdu University of Technology) ;
  • Qiushi Liu (College of Nuclear Technology and Automation Engineering, Chengdu University of Technology) ;
  • Xiaofeng Yang (College of Nuclear Technology and Automation Engineering, Chengdu University of Technology)
  • Received : 2022.11.03
  • Accepted : 2023.04.20
  • Published : 2023.08.25
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Abstract

The influence of the atmospheric radon background on the airborne gamma spectrum can seriously affect researchers' judgement of ground radiation information. However, due to load and endurance, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-borne gamma-ray spectrometry is difficulty installing upward-looking detectors to monitor atmospheric radon background. In this paper, an advanced spectral-ratio method was used to correct the atmospheric radon background for a UAV-borne gamma-ray spectrometry in Inner Mongolia, China. By correcting atmospheric radon background, the ratio of the average count rate of U window in the anomalous radon zone (S5) to that in other survey zone decreased from 1.91 to 1.03, and the average uranium content in S5 decreased from 4.65 mg/kg to 3.37 mg/kg. The results show that the advanced spectral-ratio method efficiently eliminated the influence of the atmospheric radon background on the UAV-borne gamma-ray spectrometry to accurately obtain ground radiation information in uranium exploration. It can also be used for uranium tailings monitoring, and environmental radiation background surveys.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

The authors acknowledge the financial support by Stable-Support Scientific Project of China Research Institute of Radio-wave Propagation (GrantNo.A132007W06), the National Science Foundation of China (Project No.42127807; 12105043), the Science Foundation of Sichuan (Project No. 23NSFSCC0116) and Sichuan Science and Technology Program (Project No. 2020YJ0334).

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