• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.194-203
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• 2021

Background: Surface soil radiation monitoring around nuclear facilities is important to classify and characterize the contaminated areas. A scanning and direct measurement technique can survey the sites rapidly before starting sampling analysis. Materials and Methods: Regarding this, we test and suggest a measurement technique for gross alpha/beta and ⁹⁰Sr activities in surface soil based on a mobile ZnS(Ag)/PVT (polyvinyltoluene) array and a handheld PVT rod, respectively. To detect ⁹⁰Sr selectively in soil mixed with naturally occurring radioactive materials, chosen energy channel counts from the multichannel analyzers were used instead of whole channel counts. Soil samples contaminated with exempt liquid ⁹⁰Sr with 1 Bq·g^-1, 3 Bq·g^-1, and 10 Bq·g^-1 were prepared and hardened by flocculation. Results and Discussion: The mobile ZnS(Ag)/PVT array could discriminate gross alpha, gross beta, and gamma radiation by the different pulse-shaped signal features of each sensor material. If the array is deployed on a vehicle, the scan minimum detectable concentration (MDC) range will be about 0.11-0.17 Bq·g^-1 at 18 km·h^-1 speed, highly sensitive to actual sites. The handheld PVT rod with 12 mm (Φ) × 20 mm (H) size can directly measure ⁹⁰Sr selectively if channels on which energies are from 1,470 and 2,279 keV are gated, minimizing crossdetection of other radionuclides. These methods were verified by measuring soil samples fabricated with homogeneous ⁹⁰Sr concentrations, showing static MDC of 2.16 Bq·g^-1 at a measurement time of 300 seconds. Conclusion: Based on the results, comprehensive procedures using these detectors are suggested to optimize soil sites survey.